#the only reason Sam and Tucker aren’t there is because they were with Danny when frostbite explained everything

[halfghostwriter]

When a true baby ghost is born— a ghost not born of dying, but rather through the desire of another ghost— they are little more than a core with wispy ectoplasm emanating from them for about a month. During said month, they take on influence from their surroundings in order to figure out the form they’ll take, hence why so many young ghosts look like their parents.

Because they aren’t fully formed until a month after their birth, the parent or parents will take on a far more aggressive, primal form in order to protect their child. The parent’s form will become incredibly monstrous, and their size will increase, with triple their normal size being most common among parents. Their mental state also becomes incredibly instinctual, higher intelligence temporarily being replaced by aggression towards anyone the ghost doesn’t consider family. They stay in this state until the baby is fully formed.

Of course, Danny “don’t worry about it” Phantom forgets to add this bit of trivia to his explanation to his fellow heroes as to why he was taking paternity leave. In his defense, he didn’t expect them to visit during that month.

And he definitely didn’t expect his brooding brain to latch onto most everyone who visited as “part of his brood.”

[shadow-pixelle]

Here's a random DCxDP snippet!

Wrote this on Monday. Was gonna post it yesterday and then kinda... forgot. It's a completely disconnected snippet- that is, I have no context for what's going on here, what kind of AU it is, or much of anything else at all. Also currently have no plans to try and expand it, though I might mess with it in the future when I have time? We'll see.

Honestly 80% of the reason I'm posting this is because I sent it to Kali and absolutely devastated her with the worldbuilding, so shrug.

--

“I need you to understand,” Danny said, gripping the side of the table. Tucker put a hand on his shoulder for support, and he leaned into it slightly, being very careful to keep his focus on any Bat other than Hood. “And I mean really understand, that this isn’t just- a crime. It’s not that simple.”

“Phantom…?” Red Robin sounded confused, and slightly wary.

Danny couldn’t blame him, given the situation. Ancients, Danny had just had to give up his secret identity just to make sure he didn’t try and kidnap a Bat. Nothing about this situation was normal or reasonable.

“The Infinite Realms has a lot of beings in it.” Tucker said carefully, and Danny could kiss him for being willing to lead the conversation. “Like, a lot. And they’re all ghosts in some form. But the thing about ghosts is that they can’t be killed. They’re already dead, or- like, similar to dead? The only thing you can do to stop them is imprison them or End them.”

“And Ending someone is serious.” Sam took over, stepping forward to lean into Danny’s side. “Ending someone… nothing comes back for that. When we say Ended, we mean it. There is nothing left.”

“The previous Ghost King was a being called Pariah Dark.” Danny began, fixing his eyes on Batman for someone to focus on. “He was insane, a tyrant and a conqueror. Violent. Unwilling to compromise. Anyone who stood in his way was dealt with, one way or another. He wanted to claim everything.”

“No-one tried to stop him?”

Danny’s eyes flicked to Nightwing as Tucker laughed, raw and exhausted. “He was the Ghost King. He ruled the entire Infinite Realms. He carried the sort of power that gods dream of.”

“The Ghost King can force his word, his Rule, on pretty much every being in the Realms. As close to absolute power as you can get, in the end. Everything in the Realms is made from ectoplasm, and the Ghost King can manipulate that at levels most people can’t even start to believe. There’s only two types of beings that can even try to resist that.”

“One’s the Ancients. They’re old ghosts, the oldest you can get. Incarnations of gods, concepts, things like that. But the problem with that is that they’re also limited, kinda. They can disobey the Crown, no matter what sort of Rules it puts out, but fighting back? They can stop him, sure, that’s how Pariah Dark got sealed away the first time, but they can’t stop him being King. They can’t take the Crown, even if they win. They’re bound too much to the things they incarnate, the gods they were and are. They can’t be the Ghost King. Those ties stop them being as firmly Ruled over, but it means they can’t take the Crown away. All they can do is delay it.”

“The second,” Danny took over again from his friends, grateful for their support, as the various Bats around the room looked horrified. Afraid. And for good reason, really.

It was only going to get worse.

“The second were beings called Halfas.”

A breath.

“Halfas are the only beings in the entire Infinite Realms that aren’t entirely ecto. Not alone. They’re… well. Half.”

“Half beings.”

“Half living, half dead.”

“And because of that, they’re the Balance.” Danny leaned into Sam, letting Tucker step closer again. “Equally alive and dead. Equally bound to their ecto and not. Halfas were the Balance because they cannot be Ruled.”

“From what we understand, Halfas were created by the Realms itself.” Sam said quietly. “They existed to be the Balance. Slipping from living to dead to living whenever they wanted, all the powers of a ghost and all the benefits of a living being mixed into one.”

“They were rare, because they couldn’t be killed. Kill the human side, and the ghost half keeps them alive until they recover. You can’t kill a ghost, and anything that could contain a ghost, the human side walks right out of. They were there as Balance, between the living and the dead. Advisors to the Ghost King, helping to keep things smooth between the living and the dead whenever they had to interact. Balance. Beings that couldn’t be Ruled by the Ghost King because they were as much alive as ecto.”

“They were there to stop tyrants.”

Tucker nodded at Robin’s quiet voice, and paused. It was an offer to Danny, he knew, to take this part as well. He and Sam knew everything about this. Danny didn’t need to be the one to explain.

He spoke up. “From what records say, there were around six thousand Halfas at the start of Pariah Dark’s reign.” He told them. “They were the Balance. They saw what Pariah Dark was doing and had a duty to stop it. Up until ten years ago, there were no Halfas in existence.”

The group seemed to pale.

“Halfas can’t be killed, but anything can be Ended.” He said quietly. “Pariah Dark went around every single Halfa that came to stop him, and he destroyed them so utterly that they cannot exist any more. Not as ambient ectoplasm in the Realms, not as shades or smaller spirits, not as a being in the reincarnation cycle waiting to live and die. Every single one of those Halfas no longer exists, because he destroyed everything that made them them and then destroyed all the remaining pieces as well.

“Dark Pariah was a tyrant. And he was the reason that I learned everything about my entire species from second or third hand knowledge. Everything that I know about myself? I either figured it out myself, found it in some of the few books that still exist about Halfas, or heard it from the Ancients. And those last two didn’t know much at all, in the end. Halfas were so rare that the only thing most beings got were rumours, and the Ancients weren’t an exception to that, and not many Halfas ever bothered to write things down about themselves and their powers. They couldn’t die, after all.”

Danny shivered, a little. Sam and Tucker leaned in more on either side, keeping him upright as much as the table was. None of the Bats were moving.

“I’m telling you this because I need you to understand,” he said again. “Pariah Dark was a tyrant. A nightmare. The worst thing to happen to the Realms ever. He committed so many genocides that there aren’t records of it any more, and the only silver lining,” he spat the words, mocking, because there is no silver lining in senseless slaughter, “Is that all but one of these were against the living. They were allowed to exist as ghosts. Pariah Dark was a monster.”

Danny wrenched his eyes away from Batman and looked directly at Red Hood. He pushed down the impulse to take him away, to hide him, to get him to Frostbite for help and maul and destroy anyone who got in his way, who tried to threaten him-

He pushed down his shudder, and looked Red Hood directly in the eyes.

“Pariah Dark was a monster, and even he would consider what was done to you unforgivable.”

Hood jolted. So did the rest of the Bats, looking for all the world like they’d just restarted breathing again, no longer frozen in time.

“We can’t explain to you what we’re seeing.” Sam said from his side, and she sounded almost apologetic. “It’s- literally, there are no words in any living language to explain what it looks like. And we’re only Liminal, a little bit dead. We don’t see as clearly as beings like Phantom do. But it’s-”

Words seemed to fail her, and Tucker reached around Danny’s back to squeeze her shoulder in comfort.

Danny tried, pulling his eyes away from Hood again so he could think past the urge to steal him away and hide him somewhere safe. “It’s like I’m looking at a baby.” He tried to explain. “Or- I don’t know. A puppy? Whatever cute little thing you want to go with. Something small and delicate and needing to be looked after. Something that shouldn’t be on it’s own, because it’s too young to survive. Like someone took a premature puppy, and then just.” He paused. Gestured. “Just mutilated it. Whatever horrible things you can think of, the most evil things you can imagine at all, just. All of that. And then left it crying in the trash to rot and die, except it can’t die.”

None of the Bats that he could see out of the corner of his eye look well. Hood was-

His core, the half-mangled thing that was barely there, barely able to exist and yet still trying desperately to survive, was shrieking in horror.

“Phantom’s a Protection spirit.” Sam murmured, into the silence of that. “He’s a guardian, every instinct he has is aimed at keeping people safe.”

“I can’t look at you right now.” Danny confessed to that tiny lost child. “If I look at you too long, I just- Every instinct I have is telling me to get you away, to take you back to the Realms and hide you somewhere safe while I get a doctor or twelve, and that if anyone else gets even close to you they need to be mauled. I transformed because those instincts were even worse in ghost form, and I didn’t want to hurt anyone who wasn’t responsible for this.”

“I want to wrap them up in vines and strangle them.”

“I’d kinda like to suffocate all of them in sand and then mount them on a wall or something.”

“And they’re Liminal.” Danny added. “They’re not even fully dead, barely even dead at all. Any being of the Realms that sees you is going to want to help, or at least get vengeance, because it’s-

“It’s not even something Pariah Dark would do, and he committed a genocide of an entire people just because he didn’t want to be held accountable and couldn’t stand having people he couldn’t control in the Realms.”

For a long, long moment, no-one spoke. None of them even seemed to be breathing.

Danny flickered his eyes across Hood one more time, then focused on Batman again.

“So,” he said, as firmly as he could. “I’d quite like to know who did that to him. Because my next step is going to be to call the Council, get war declared on them, and then erase them.”

[millylotus]

Super Villain Summer Internships [Everlasting Trio, DpxDc]

Everlasting Trio don’t know what they’re going to do for college, so they decide to just bite the bullet and do a few internships. Although they all forget to tell each other that they’re each interning with villains.

Danny is with Mister Freeze, going under the name Blizzard

Danny is basically the one doing a bunch of intern work while also not, at first he was just kinda there cause he liked being cold

But then he and Freeze begin to bond over feeling responsible for things that aren’t really their fault, Danny promises to help Freeze revive Nora

They have a father-son relationship, in how they’re actually pretty similar in personality & powers

Sam is with Poison Ivy, under the name Blood Blossom

Sam is the only one to have a legal internship because Ivy actually wrote her down as her legal lab assistant

She and Pam are very Big Sis-Little Sis energy, Sam is the annoying younger sibling who wants to do everything their big sister does

Pam finds this devotion to their ideals adorable, and supports Sam in their joint endeavors

Tucker is with Bane, going as Ruin

Tucker acting as Bane’s tech guy, he’s been working on a new type of venom for Bane he doesn’t get into many fights but if he needs to he doesn’t back down

They have an Uncle-nephew relationship going on but also Tucker gets a bit obsessive about making the best venom that they have Frankenstein & Frankenstein’s Monster going on too

It’s mainly just Tucker getting to cackle evilly while Bane just say “Alright chiquito, have you eaten breakfast yet? You get angry when hungry.”

The batfam is not prepared to deal with two mini rouges and a secret mini rouge who they haven’t met yet but are still worried about

A couple weeks into their internship the Gotham Rogues have their bi-monthly meeting where The Everlasting Trio is introduced to everyone

Ivy, Freeze, & Bane were also surprised to see that their interns actually knew each other/are dating

The Everlasting Trio are the entire reason why the Gotham Rogues are even talking to each other at the moment

Now the bats are even more confused & concerned because the rogues are usually at each other’s throats

It’s the only thing keeping them from taking over tbh

When the batfam find out that the three interns they’ve had to deal with for like most of June, all know each other and are actively in a polycule, they feel like everything makes so much more sense

The trio do have an ulterior motive to this whole thing, at first it’s just indulging in their less than stellar morals

Until it’s not

They become more enthralled in their ambitions, Sam begins to care less and less about the world outside of plants, she cares less about the civilian casualties, she begins to use ecto-science on plants

Pam & Harley are very concerned because they’re both on their path to redemption and Sam is going in the other direction

Danny becomes just as obsessive as Mister Freeze with trying to bring back Nora, he’s bringing in ecto-science in an attempt to bring her back through re-bonding her soul back to her body

Freeze isn’t against this exactly, but he’s unsure if it’ll bring the real Nora back, he’s still gonna go with it

Tucker has fully fallen into the mad scientist idea, he wants to make Bane the best version of himself the best human possible, his new version of venom is directed by ecto-science and such

Bane of course wants to be stronger but he knows at some point Tucker is gonna go to far, so he’s willing to hold the kid back if need be, but he isn’t going to actually do it he wants Tucker to go bad

By the time the Trio reaches the point of no return their bosses realizes this is not going to go their way anymore

Everlasting Trio: You’re just afraid to take it, One. Step. Further.

The fight to take back Gotham from the Everlasting Trio is a long one

Sam has complete control over Robinson Park [biggest park in Gotham] along with its botanical gardens and such

The surrounding neighborhoods are overrun with plants, she has people asleep and under her control for the most part

Tucker has most of the upper districts running wild on the venom he’s made, people are now more powerful than Superman himself and have lost their minds in their blind rage, they’re all mainly under his control

Danny has the east bays and the graveyards near by, everything is frozen over, the bodies in the harbor and in the ground have been reanimated into ice soldiers and are under his control most of the time

Ivy, Harley, Freeze, & Bane have to call in the bats for help with the Trio and their plans

They split up to go for their kid, with a few bats behind them to back them up

Ivy & Harley pull on Sam’s care for the rest of the world

Bane brings Tucker down from the high, making him think this through

Freeze gets Danny to realize that nobody he brought back is who they first were

By the end of it the trio is subdued after a big fight and some impassioned speeches

They’re admitted into Arkham Asylum, they promise their mentors that they’ll do better, that they’ll get better & make them proud of them

Admittedly I completely forgot to mention the trio’s family back in Amity

Let’s just say they don’t all know the nature of their internship

Jack & Maddie are aware that Danny is interning under an important doctor but they weren’t sure who he is

Angela & Maurice don’t know what’s going on with Tucker he hasn’t given them any stable information, he wanted to keep it that way with them thinking he’s still a good kid

Jeremy & Pamela know exactly what Sam was doing, she made sure of it, she wanted them to know they’re baby girl was running with villains now

Jazz is actually living in Gotham while this is going on, she going to college at GU for psychology, she’s interning at Arkham

She’s actually close with the bats, having met Jason, she’s one of the few psychs they trust at all

She knows that Sam is working with Ivy, she’s tried reaching out to her but Sam refuses to talk to her

She’s only ever seen Blizzard from afar, and was unable to connect him with Danny

She didn’t even know Ruin existed until the bats told her, and even then she didn’t know he was Tucker

When they’re taken down Jazz finds out who they are and she’s crushed, she feels she not only failed Sam, but also Danny & Tucker as well

Since the trio are all 18+ by the time they’re arrested nobody from Amity is sent anything to tell them they’ve been arrested

For about a week Jazz is actually their therapist at Arkham before she’s re-assigned when it’s realized she knows them personally

Jazz ends up telling the Foleys and the Fentons what happened

Then Amity gets the broadcast of their very own Samantha Manson being arrested in Gotham, New Jersey for eco-terrorism

Everything else just blows up in their faces after that, The three families don’t even dare show face around for awhile

They go to Gotham to actually visit their kids in Arkham

The Foleys are so disappointed in their son for what he’s done, Tucker can’t even look them in the eyes as the yell at him about everything

For the Mansons it sprouts into a huge shouting match with Sam almost jumping to table to try and physically fight her parents

All the Fentons do is stare at each other, they try to ask Danny why but he’s not cooperating with his biting remarks and not wanting to even see them for almost a week

Regarding their sentence and institutionalization the trio only has about five years or until they show sufficient mental stability for two years straight

This is another one that's been sitting around for awhile. And I also remembered the the banner i made for Batfam & Everlasting trio content

Main Story Index [It's kinda messy but it's got links to most everything]

[mutable-manifestation]

Family at the Core

So I decided to continue the rogues-as-family-with-Danny once they realize he's a baby & flee to the DC universe/Gotham fic.

Parts 1 & 2

Info: AU where you gotta fight ecto with ecto - it’s the only thing that has any effect on them, and it’s part of the reason why the ghosts love Amity so much - aside from the whole “thinking danny was old ghost pretending at being human and openly challenging pretty much everyone by claiming a Living Realm haunt and then opening a stable portal in it” (from their perspective pre-’holy shit he’s baby’ realization) - Danny? Sam & Tucker with ecto weapons? Humans who can and will put up a challenge but won’t try to seriously harm them ala bastards like Pariah & the Guys In White? It’s practically the ideal ghostly vacation spot. 

The Fenton fam are the first to discover how to fight ghosts in their dimension, but DC didn’t have blood blossoms and made the deal w/Pariah before they figured out the ecto v ecto option

This is pre-ID reveals among the JL because it’s funnier. 

Disclaimer: idk how the police work I’m just rolling with what sounds probably like it’d be right.

***

Kitty and Johnny disappear before they can discuss a time for the police sweep, but Kitty <i>had</i> asked for Bruce’s number earlier in the conversation - “To set up that playdate once we’re more settled in” - after Bruce had mentioned the benefits of peer contact for children.

(The complete and utter disconnect from information about humans certainly lent credence to their claim of being ghosts - or at least not humans)  

She’d promised to give him a call once they got their phones set up. Hopefully that would be soon - they really needed to talk about the Lazarus Pit in the building before the kid fell in and died - assuming they truly weren’t aware of it prior to selecting the location. 

Perhaps Bruce could convince them to block it off? If they truly weren’t after the pit, he could ask about setting them up with a better place; make up some excuse about wanting the building for the company.

He makes contact with them and is left with more questions than answers; at least they know where they are now, despite the in-costume team's inability to track them as they left.

Constantine and Deadman arrive together <i>less</i> than an hour later, managing to arrive at the Batcave at the same time as Bruce’s group.

Constantine twirls an unlit cigarette between his fingers as the footage of the Joker incident plays.

It stops twirling when the lunch lady appears on the screen.

His lips form a grim line as he watches.

“Anyone ever told you you’re the unluckiest bastard this side ‘a the pond?” Constantine asks, turning to Batman once the first video concludes.

“No.” Is Batman’s humorless reply.

“Don’t leave us in suspense here, Conny,” Nightwing slides closer to lightly elbow him in the side. “Is Damian Wayne’s doppelganger the most haunted kid in America or what?”

Robin, for his part, crossed his arms and continued sulking - as he had been since Batman had read them in on the existence of JL Dark and verified that ghosts were indeed real.

“Most haunted kid this damn dimension, Bird boy,” Constantine answered, stowing his cigarette. “Those-” he gestures to the now-blank screen “-are Infinite Realms Ghosts. They aren’t like Deadman here, they’re about a million times worse.”

“Hey!” Deadman protests.

“They come from a place they call ‘The Infinite Realms’ - big shock there. Their kind haven’t been seen in this dimension for tens of thousands of years now; most people just think they’re myths by this point. I only even know about it because my thrice-damned house wouldn’t stop throwing a book on the subject at me until I read it a few years back.”

He puts the cigarette away in favor of crossing his arms.

“The Realms are said to be connected to every dimension there is, and legend has it that way back when we got a lot of visitors from their side. Had a lot of names - the era of chaos, the age of disaster, whatever you wanna call it. They treated this dimension like a plaything, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop them. 

Nothing worked - salt, holy symbols, the magics of the time, etc. Supposedly, someone even tried summoning a demon and watched the thing get hunted. Realms ghosts were leagues more powerful than any of the other known beings at the time and no one could find a way to fight them. The only reason they left was because some group made a deal with their king - no details on what the deal involved other than getting them to get lost.”

“So we are simply supposed to hope that their king isn’t too busy dealing with the infinitely many other dimensions they are apparently hooked up to to come get a few strays out of ours?” Robin questions icily.

“It means you’re simply supposed to give me a chance to do some more research - I only skimmed the one book to get the house off my back. What I read wasn’t promising, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t more useful information buried somewhere.” Constantine replies with an eyeroll. “For now, if they want to play house with some poor bastard? Wayne’s got enough kids to know how to give good enough advice they don’t accidentally kill him in the meantime. Infiltrate their playdates if you’re that worried. And look on the bright side! They took care of your clown problem. Now, you said you had two videos?”

“Yes,” Batman answers tightly, bringing up said second video. “We managed to get footage of their meeting with the Waynes.”

The second watching was far less eventful.

Until the very end, when Kitty and Bruce shake hands and Constantine lets loose a stream of curses.

“What? What’s wrong?” Red Robin demands.

“What’s wrong is that Brucie Wayne is dumber than a sack of damn bricks.” 

The batclan members make various coughing/strangled noises at this, save for Batman, who remains stoic. 

“Who the fuck meets a self-declared non-human entity and shakes on a deal.” Constantine drags an exasperated hand down his face. “Make sure Wayne knows his ass needs to buy them that building asap or Ghost Girl gets to make him dance to whatever tune she wants; break a deal with a dealmaker and they get controlling shares in your soul.”

“I see,” Batman says, “We’ll get in touch with him again after this; we need to discuss the police sweep of the Yuyan building anyway. If direct observation will help, he should be willing to bring you along as a civilian friend.”

Constantine looked at him like he had three heads.

“Not a chance in hell, Bats.”

He backs away from the table toward the cave’s Zeta tube.

“Oh! Oh, me! Pick me! I wanna meet the new ghosts!” Deadman shook his arms wildly, doing loops in the air.

“The visibility spell won’t last that long and we don’t know if their kind of ghost can see you without it. Also, we were in the middle of something. We already detoured. Let’s finish the job and then we can come back and play ghost party 2: yet another pain in my ass edition, yeah?” 

“Awwwwww,” Deadman slouched sadly before zipping into the tube with him.

“Great. Have fun, try to get along with the new neighbors, don’t shake any hands, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, yadda yadda, aaaaaand bye.”

And with that, they were gone. 

“Well that’s not ideal,” Nightwing mutters.

The meeting had at least answered one question.

Now for the other two dozen.

---------------------

Kitty wants to get this cop sweep over with as soon as possible.

The others are hesitant at first - or territorial, in Walker’s case - but a little fast-talking has him all for the idea. 

The chronic rule-follower had only taken to making his own rules because of the zone’s inherent chaos and lack of real, broader government. In Gotham there are rules pre-made to follow, to enforce. He eats it up.

He’ll be obsessed with being law-abiding once he’s done studying up, but Kitty had been headed towards a future in law before her own death. She was well aware that it would take him - even with the aid of an eidetic memory - a minimum of months to read enough to actually start enforcing anything. 

And until he’d read it all? Kitty was free to make him paranoid about missing a later subsection to create her own Walker-loopholes.

Once he’s on-side, he practically carries the argument for her. She only pipes up again to mention how “the baby would probably be a lot more comfortable with a stable, uncontested home.”

Walker does his own sweep of the building, opening cabinets and hidden passages and drawing attention to weapons and other hints of crimes-past and Kitty hovers over Technus’ shoulder as they hash out the details of how best to lure in the police.

The Box Ghost leads the others - except Ember, who ‘s on baby-watch at the pool - in packaging up everything they want to keep to be phased into the ground under the building.

Arguing took most of the time and it’s only the work of another two hours to have the entire building ready for the cops to peruse. 

In the end, they decide setting off a small bomb by the entrance is the easiest way to draw police attention - they’ll come investigate, when no one responds they’ll have to check it out, they’ll find the weapons and cult-like documents and murder records Walker had located sitting out in the open, et voila: wanted owners and building up for grabs.

They, of course, will be invisibly watching the whole thing.

Danny hasn’t left the pool since their arrival and they don’t want him to, so he stays there with Johnny on watch to make them both invisible if and when anyone enters that room.

It goes off without a hitch, and by 11 o’clock Kitty is flying to a nearby roof to call Bruce and remind him of his end of the bargain.

***

@yjfk @fisticuffsatapplebees @little-pondhead @avery-isastupid-name @queenofdiscord @samgirl98 @inkyunicorn @mimilikey @aconitewolfsbane @miraculousandmore @someonebored0100 @wildbacon-blog @fleshybeing @vala-dreams @ironicvixen @blurblurbblurrrr @ectoplasmic-knife

[q-gorgeous]

Wing-Bully

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 5267

No one knows au except dash baxter @xscarletsakurax

this is a rework of something that was gonna go write some other writing i did but then i split them into two different fics because the halves didnt vibe with each other kjhgvcf

hidey hey

“Dash, you’re here so we can work on our project for Lancer’s class. We’re not supposed to be down here.” 

“Come on, ghosts aren’t even real. How dangerous can it be down here?”

Danny rolled his eyes. “Dangerous enough that we should really be wearing jumpsuits to protect us from ecto-contamination.”

He walked over to the closet that was down there and pulled out his jumpsuit while Dash laughed at him. 

“Matching outfits with your parents? Lame.”

“Don’t complain to me if you get ectoplasm poisoning then.” 

Danny pulled on his jumpsuit and groaned at the sticker on his chest. He pulled it off and tossed it away. 

“What’s this?” Dash pointed at the deep hole in the wall. Danny walked over to him.

“That’s my parent’s ghost portal. It didn’t end up working though.” 

Dash pushed him towards the portal. “Why don’t you go check it out?”

Danny frowned at him and tried to catch his footing. “No. I don’t know what’s wrong with it. I can’t-” 

“Haha, go in.”

“Dash, stopping pushing me-”

Danny tripped backwards over the threshold of the portal. He tried to catch himself on something on the wall but all he ended up doing was pressing a button that for some godforsaken reason was on the inside of the portal. It hummed around him and after a few moments everything went green. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Glad to see you’re not dead, nerd.” 

Danny looked up to see Dash. It was too early in the morning to deal with him after yesterday. 

“You already knew I wasn’t dead.” 

“A man can dream.” Danny rolled his eyes at Dash’s comment.

“I remember someone crying a lot of tears yesterday when they thought I was dead.” 

A blush rose on Dash’s cheeks. “My adrenaline was running like crazy! It’s not my fault your screams triggered some kind of primal response in my brain!”

“Crying is a primal response now?”

Dash rolled his eyes back at him and crossed his arms. “Have you figured out your whole ghost thing yet?”

“It’s literally been one day.” Danny stared at him. “How could I have figured anything out yet?”

Dash leaned in close to Danny and he glanced at Dash’s lips for a moment before his gaze darted back to Dash’s. “Maybe your parents have some sort of cure. Or maybe it was a one time thing. I don’t know.” 

“Why do you care so much? It’s literally your fault this is happening.”

Dash raised a hand and looked like he was reaching to place it on Danny’s shoulder. “I just-”

Dash was interrupted by someone clearing their throat behind them. They turned around and were met with Sam and Tucker. She was glaring at Dash with her arms crossed. 

“What are you friends with him now?” Sam asked, angrily gesturing at Dash.

“Woah, so what if he wants to be friends with me?” He asked, stepping towards her.

She barked out a laugh. “Come on! You’ve been bullying him the entire time I’ve known both of you. Why would he want to be friends with you? You must be blackmailing him or something.”

“Sam, he’s not blackmailing me.”

“How can we trust that? You could be lying because he’s blackmailing you.” Tucker frowned at him and reached out a hand, placing it on Danny’s shoulder. “I don't want what happened in elementary school to happen again.”

Danny shrugged it off. “That’s not what’s going on. Why can’t you just trust me on this?”

“Because this isn’t smart.” Sam said. “Why do you guys need to be friends?”

Danny threw his hands into the air. “Why are you getting so defensive about this? You’ve literally only seen us have this one conversation and you’re already mad at me. For all you know we could have been assigned a project together or he’s asking about his tutoring sessions with Jazz. Maybe he had to reschedule and wanted me to tell Jazz.”

Tucker shuffled where he stood but Sam still stared at him with crossed arms. 

“Yeah but are you going to tell us the real reason?”

“Does it matter, Sam?” 

Out of the corner of his eye Dash saw Danny start slowly sinking. He panickingly grabbed Danny’s arm to prevent him from sinking any further into the ground. Danny tried to keep his expression neutral but Dash could tell he was shaken. 

“Oh. Is that what’s happening?” Sam looked between the two of them. 

“Is what happening?” Danny asked, frowning at her. 

“What kind of enemies to lovers bullshit is this?” Dash’s eyes widened at her outburst. What was she talking about? What did she think was happening?

His gaze landed on where his hand was still wrapped around Danny’s upper arm and he pulled it back like he’d been burned. Sam scoffed. 

“Sam-” Tucker started but she interrupted him.

“Do you even realize how toxic that kind of relationship can be? He’s just going to hurt you.”

Danny recoiled at her words. “What are you even talking about?”

“The fact that you two seem to be getting real cozy with each other? Are you dating or something?” 

Dash stepped in front of Danny. “How shallow do you have to assume the only reason I’d be talking to him now is if we’re dating? For your information, we used to be friends as kids.” Dash frowned at her and watched as she backed up. “Just because you’re self conscious about your major crush on Fenton doesn’t mean you have to take it out on us because we’re having a simple conversation.”

A blush appeared on Sam’s cheeks before she angrily stormed away. 

“Sorry.” Tucker said as he looked between them again before he followed after her.

Danny watched them as they walked into the school. He was quiet for a few moments before he turned his gaze back to Dash.

“Sam has a crush on me?”

Dash groaned. “That is what you’re focused on?” He started walking towards the school.

Danny followed next to him. “But I didn’t know that! How did you know that?”

“You’re just about the only person who didn’t know, Fenton.”

Dash pushed through the front doors of the school. Danny had a dazed look on his face. 

“Is that why everyone calls me clueless?” He whispered. 

“Clueless strikes again.”

Danny frowned up at him. “Oh what, you’re so observant, are you?”

Dash pushed open the front door of the school. It swung closed behind them. “More than you. I’m not even friends with Manson and I could see the blackened heart eyes she was giving you.” 

Danny shuffled his backpack on his shoulders as they walked down the hall. “I’ve just never seen her that way. I don’t like her like that.”

Dash’s brows shot up on his forehead. “You don’t?”

Danny shook his head. He veered off to the right and Dash followed him to his locker. “She's just a friend to me.” 

Dash leaned against the lockers while Danny tried to open his but his hand just ended up passing through the dial lock. He groaned.

“Maybe you should tell her that, then. Get it over with so she doesn’t try to kill anyone that even thinks to get close to you.”

Danny rolled his eyes. He finally got his locker open. “She wouldn’t kill anyone for getting close to me.”

“I don’t know.” Dash drawled. “She looked like she was gonna claw my eyes out back there. Like a creepy bat girl.”

Danny slammed his locker shut and turned to look at Dash. “You know, if we’re going to be doing whatever this is, I would appreciate you not making comments about my friends like that.” 

“But she can talk to me like that?”

Danny frowned. “No. I literally told her there was no reason for her to be talking to you like that for having a simple conversation with me.”

“But she’s allowed to not like me?”

“That’s your own fault.” Danny rolled his eyes. “She has every right not to like you.”

Dash huffed. He was about to say something but then Danny started sinking into the floor again. Danny panickingly grabbed Dash’s forearm to prevent himself from sinking any further in. Dash pulled him up and when he set him back down, his feet were solid again. Dash looked around them and miraculously no one else in the hall saw what happened. 

“I’m already over this.” Danny mumbled as he let go of Dash. 

“Do you think you’ll get control over it eventually?” Dash asked him. 

“Hopefully. Otherwise I’ll probably have no choice but to ask my parents for help. I really don’t want to do that though.” 

“Maybe we could do some training? Or practice? You won’t get used to your powers if you just try to ignore them. If you try to do it, then maybe you’ll understand how to not do it.”

Danny nodded. “That makes sense. I guess that’s what we’ll have to do.” 

They came to a split in the hallway. Danny looked up at him.

“Well, I’m going this way.” Danny hooked a thumb over his shoulder as he turned to face Dash.”

Dash nodded. “See you later. Hopefully you don’t drop anything today.”

“Hopefully. We’ll see.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

Thirty four beakers. 

Danny was finally getting ahold of his powers and all it took was thirty four dropped beakers and a lifetime ban from handling anything fragile while he was at school. 

Aside from the frequent ghost sighting, things were starting to look up.

“Manson!” 

If only Dash could learn to keep his thoughts to himself when it came to his friends. 

“What is this garbage?” 

He stomped up to where the three of them were sitting at their table in the cafeteria. Sam frowned at him. 

“It’s not garbage! It’s recyclable organic matter.”

“It’s garbage.” Danny and Tucker said together. 

Danny gasped out a breath of cold air. He looked around him. He saw a lunch lady ghost behind the food counter. 

Dash followed his gaze to where the ghost was. He saw it just as she walked behind the wall. 

Dash looked back at Sam and held up his plate of mud, pushing himself between Danny and his friends. “When I asked for a mud pie, I thought I was gonna get a mud pie. Not a literal mud pie!” 

“Actually, it’s topsoil.” 

“Whatever. Are you going to actually eat this garbage?”

Danny slipped away while Dash argued with his friends. Maybe Dash arguing with his friends could actually be useful for something for once. 

He found somewhere to hide and transformed. He flew invisibly back to the cafeteria to the room the lunch ladies worked in. She was floating there looking around and the food and the lunch trays. She kind of looked like Tucker’s grandma. 

She caught sight of him. Danny was ready to bolt as she floated up to him, but she wasn’t making any moves to attack him.

“Hello.” She said sweetly. “Can you help me? Today’s lunch should be meatloaf, but there’s not any here. Did someone change the menu?”

“Oh. Uh, yeah. They’re trying something new this week.” 

Danny jumped back as her hair suddenly flamed up with her anger.

“The menu has been the same for fifty years!” She shouted at him. 

“Wait-”

She levitated some plates and shot them at him. Danny dodged and caught them, avoiding getting hit. What was up with this lady? Why was the menu so important? 

“The menu is sacred! Lunch is sacred!” She spoke in her sickly sweet voice again. “Would you like some cake?”

Danny looked at her, confused. “If you’re offering-”

“No one gets cake until the menu is changed back!” 

She held her arms up and meat started flying towards her from every direction. It engulfed her and turned her into a meat monster.

“Meat is the most important food group! Without meat, you’ll remain puny and muscle-less!” 

“I’m not arguing with you there.” Danny mumbled. He geared up for a kick but she grabbed his ankle and sent him flying across the room. 

“I will restore the sanctity of the lunch menu! As soon as I find out who changed it!”

She disappeared in a tornado of meat.

The ghost was gone for now. Danny flew through the wall of the school and collapsed onto the ground. He transformed back and tried to push himself up. He was so tired. He’d never used his powers like that before. He groaned. 

“Hey.”

Danny opened his eyes and looked up. Dash was standing there with his hand outstretched to Danny. He looked at it for a second before he reached up and grabbed it, pulling himself up with Dash’s help. 

“Thanks. That ghost wiped me out.”

“No problem. I wanted to make sure that ghost didn’t kill you. I was trying to find you when I saw you fly through the wall and hit the ground out here.”

Danny nodded. “Yeah that wasn’t fun.” He looked down and saw that he was still holding onto Dash’s hand. He pulled it away and coughed. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “I should go check on Sam and Tucker though. I want to make sure they’re okay.”

“The ghost attack was pretty contained.” Dash said. “I’m sure they’re fine.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Ah.” Dash said. “That’s fair. Sorry about dragging out that argument with her.”

Danny shrugged and started walking away. “It distracted them long enough to let me slip away for a bit so. No harm done. At least not to me.”

“Good luck. Hopefully she doesn’t chew your head off.” 

Danny pulled the door Dash had walked out open and stepped back inside the school, shaking the hand that had been holding Dash’s. He made his way through the hallways to find Sam and Tucker. 

Sam slammed open the cafeteria doors as Danny stumbled down the hallway. 

“I still can’t believe you’re talking to that meathead.” She shot at him with no preamble. “He literally antagonizes all of us. And then you ditch us to go meet up with him? I saw you two outside.”

“Sam-” 

“What can you say to defend him?” She turned to look at him. “He beats you up all the time.”

“Not anymore.” Danny said.

“What?” Sam stopped walking.

“He doesn’t beat me up anymore.”

She didn’t say anything to that for a few moments. She shook her head. “I still don’t trust him. I don’t get how you could forgive him so easily.”

“I-” He stopped. Had he forgiven Dash?

Sam shook his head. “Let’s just get to class.”

Danny looked around them. “Where’s Tucker?”

She rolled her eyes. “He said he smelt meat so he went to track it down through the hallways. I don’t know if he’s found it yet.” 

Danny scrunched up his nose. He knew exactly what meat Tucker was smelling. “He’s just gonna go eat whatever random mystery meat he finds?”

“Apparently.”

Danny didn’t respond after her last stilted reply. He followed behind her to their next class. When they walked in she went straight to her seat but he looked up and made eye contact with Dash. Dash gave him a questioning look and Danny just shrugged at him before sitting back down.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dash walked into the Nasty Burger. Football had just ended and he was hungry. 

As he was walking to the counter he saw Danny sitting at a table with his friends. Dash smirked and walked over to them.

“Hey, nerds.” He placed a hand on the table and leaned his weight into it. 

Sam rolled her eyes. “What do you want?” 

“I just came to say hi to my favorite nerds. Is there a problem with that?” 

“If we’re your favorite does that mean you’ll stop making fun of us?” Tucker asked thoughtfully. “Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, Sam.”

“He’s not going to stop making fun of us, Tucker. The two of them are over there ‘trying to be friends.’” She said with air quotes. “And he still picks on us all the time.” 

“I’ve tried talking to him about it, Sam, but he has a hard time with it.” 

She shot Danny a look. “So why be friends with him? Why give him a chance? What do you see in him?”

“Just because he doesn’t like you-”

Sam scoffed. “Maybe you’re too insecure about your own crush on Danny.” 

Danny whipped his head to look at her. 

“What?” Dash laughed it off. “What are you talking about, Manson?” 

“Yeah, Sam, what are you talking about?” Danny stared at her. 

“Isn’t that what’s been happening this whole time?” She shot back at them. “He’s got some kind of weird feelings for you, he’s trying to get into your pants. Get on your good side. The pulling the girl’s pigtails because you like her bullshit? Don’t you see how weird his sudden change in actions towards you is?” 

“What about your sudden change in actions?” Danny shot at her. “Do you realize how much of an asshole you’ve been lately?”

“Well, maybe if you weren’t friends with-”

Danny threw his hands up in the air. “God forbid if I make new friends! Or try to get along with someone instead of fighting! Or even make decisions for myself.” 

“Danny-”

He cut her off and stood up. “No I’m-” He gasped and Dash saw his ghost sense fog out of his mouth. He frowned. “I’m going home. I need some time alone.” He turned and started walking towards the door. 

“Danny!” Dash followed behind Danny out of the Nasty Burger. 

The ghost was flying above the parking lot shooting ecto-blasts every which way. 

The door slammed behind Dash and Danny turned his head to look at him. 

“I need some time to think. Please just go back inside.” 

He called on his transformation rings. Once they passed across his body he jumped up and flew into the air towards the ghost. 

He watched Danny fight the ghost. He could tell he was angry. He was sloppy today. 

Danny missed a dodge and got hit through the air by the ghost. He ended up turned facing the opposite direction so he didn’t see it start to charge at him. 

Dash’s heart raced as he watched the ghost fly up to Danny. His heart stirred with feelings he wanted to push down. He didn’t need to put himself in danger for Danny. He didn’t feel that way. Danny didn’t feel that way about him.

But as the ghost got closer, Dash couldn’t help as the anxiety skyrocketed. His resolve broke and he picked up a big piece of asphalt off the ground and chucked it at the ghost. It turned to look at him. 

Dash froze when the ghost’s eyes landed on him. What was he doing? Was Danny really that important to him now?

The ghost’s mouth filled up with ectoplasm and shot it towards.

He wouldn’t be able to move in-

Danny knocked Dash out of the way of the ecto-blast just in time. His arms wrapped around Dash’s chest and he flew back. The blast hit the ground where he’d been standing just a moment before. 

Dash wrapped his arms around Danny as they slammed into the ground. He groaned as his back slid across the pavement and Danny looked down at him. He started feeling the back of Dash’s head, running his fingers through his hair. 

Dash opened his eyes and looked up at Danny. He looked panicked. Like something was wrong, but he literally just prevented anything from being wrong.

“Dash, are you okay?”

He nodded. “Back hurts. Head’s fine.”

Danny leaned down and lay his head on Dash’s chest. Dash’s hands slid down Danny’s back and rested at his side and he closed his eyes again. He really didn’t like this whole ghost hunting thing. 

The ghost roared behind them and Dash felt Danny’s head shoot back up. 

“Shit! How did I forget about the ghost?”

Dash waved his hand above him. “Go. I’m fine. I’m just gonna get my bearings on the ground here.” 

Dash listened as Danny finished fighting the ghost. It ended quickly and he could hear Danny’s footsteps as he walked to stand over Dash. Dash opened his eyes and his heart jumped at the way the sun shone on Danny’s white hair. 

Danny held his hand out to Dash and he slowly reached up and grabbed it. Danny pulled him to his feet and looked at their hands. He let go a moment later. 

“I think we need a new rule. No interfering with ghost attacks.”

“What?” Dash frowned at him. “That thing was about to gobble you.” 

Danny crossed his arms. “Yeah, but if I didn’t get to you on time you could've gotten very badly hurt. I thought I knocked your head on the ground when I knocked you out of the way.” 

Dash shrugged. “But you didn’t.” 

“We can’t rely on that.” Danny looked away from him. “Just promise you won’t interfere like that again?”

Dash wasn’t sure if that was something he could actually do. But one look at the expression on Danny’s face told Dash he should at least try. 

“Yeah. I promise.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny was nodding off in the middle of class. They were given time to work on their homework today but all Danny wanted to do was sleep. Having to fight all these ghosts all the time was making his life way too stressful. He wasn’t to sleep or get his homework done or even get to class on time. It was starting to get to him. 

He yawned. While his eyes were shut he heard someone sit down next to him. He opened his eyes and saw Dash in the next seat over. 

“You look tired.”

“Thanks, captain obvious. I didn’t realize.” 

Dash shrugged. He slouched back in his seat. “Your friends are whispering about you back there.” 

Danny turned and looked over his shoulder at where Sam and Tucker sat at the table in the back of the classroom. When they saw him looking Sam turned back around. Tucker just waved at him awkwardly. 

Danny waved back at him. “I wish they’d just sit over here with me.” 

Dash waved them off. “Who needs ‘em if they’re going to be treating you like that.” 

Sam snorted behind them. Dash turned to look at her. “You got something to say Manson?”

“As if we could treat him any worse than anything you’ve ever done to him.” 

Dash shrugged as he faced back towards the front of the classroom. “Hey, at least my character arc is positive. I’ve made amends.” 

“You’ve hardly even done anything. What kind of character arc have you actually had?”

“I-” Dash started but then he stopped. His brows dropped down and he looked at Danny. 

It hit Danny then that the only thing that really changed with Dash’s behavior was how he treated Danny. He didn’t pick on him anymore and he had cared about him, but he immediately resumed the same habits with both of Danny’s friends. Any time that Dash covered for Danny’s whereabouts during ghost fights, the only thing he could think to do was antagonize Sam and Tucker. He could never think up any actual excuses that wouldn’t cause more problems. 

Danny missed part of the conversation. By the time he tuned back in, Sam was glaring at Dash from across the room. 

“Just because he’d rather spend time with me than you-”

Danny’s ghost sense picked that moment to go off and he couldn’t think of a more convenient time for it to have happened. He stood up sharply and made his way out of the classroom quickly. The door slammed behind him as it closed and he was a couple steps down the hallway when the door opened behind him again.

“Danny, wait-” 

“Why do you do that?” Danny turned and frowned at him. 

“What?” Dash’s brows furrowed.

“Why do you dig at them like that? Make them feel bad about what’s going on?”

“Manson-” Dash started but Danny interrupted him. 

“No. Sam and Tucker are mad at me because of you. They think I’m always ditching them to go hang out with you instead.” 

“That’s not my fault!” Dash shouted back at him. “That’s the ghost’s fault!” 

“But they don’t know that!” Danny stared at him. “All they know is that I’m on good terms with you now and I disappear all the time. They know something is up.” 

Dash shuffled where he stood. He knew he was causing a rift between Danny and his friends. No matter how much he liked to antagonize them, he wasn’t proud of it. He wasn’t trying to put distance between them. 

Danny sighed. “She keeps making jabs about us being together like it would be crazy. Like it would be the worst thing in the world.” Danny looked up at Dash. “I would like it if it wasn’t the craziest thing in the world. If it could actually be true. But with the way you treat my friends-” He shook his head. 

Everything around Dash stopped. What? 

“Danny-”

A blue mist came out of Danny’s mouth again. He shook his head.

“I gotta go.”

“Wait-”

Danny ran around the corner away from Dash.

“What did you do to him?” 

Dash looked down the hallway to see Sam glaring at him. Tucker stood next to her. 

“What?” He asked. 

“He just ran away from you? What did you do to him?” She stomped her way over to him.

“Nothing!” Dash held his hands up in a surrendering motion. “We were just talking and he had to go-”

“We’re in the middle of class. What else would he need to be doing right now?”

“Yeah. Why would he be leaving?” Tucker asked. 

“He, uh, went to-”

Sam ran past him and around the corner Danny went down, Tucker close on her heels. Dash followed behind them knowing Danny would already be gone but they didn’t stop there. They ran down the hallway and out the door leading outside. 

“Danny?” She shouted. “Where are you?”

Dash was the only one that noticed Danny floating in the sky. He was fighting an animal type ghost.

“Uh, guys, I think we should probably go back inside.” 

He pointed up at the sky and Sam and Tucker followed his finger. Sam’s eyes widened and she looked around the front of the school again. 

“Danny!” 

Phantom must’ve heard that one because he turned his head to look down at them. The ghost took that moment to hit Phantom, sending him flying through the air. Now he was much closer to them. 

This ghost looked horrifying. It was animalistic but it looked uncannily like a person. Stringy, hair looking fur and teeth curved into a creepy smile. 

“Get to safety! Now!” Phantom shouted down at them. He shot another ectoblast at the ghost. 

“We have to find Danny first!” Sam shouted in a panic. 

“He’s not out here.” Dash turned to go back inside the school. “Let’s just listen to Phantom and get somewhere safe.”

“That hallway doesn’t lead anywhere except outside! Where else could he be?” Sam asked, still turning around looking for Danny. 

“He didn’t-” 

“Danny!” Tucker shouted. 

Dash growled. Why didn’t they just listen to him? 

The ghost let out a shriek and Dash squeezed his eyes shut and covered his ears. 

“Go inside, now!” 

Dash’s eyes opened at Phantom’s shout. He looked back up into the air. 

Dash stared at the ghost that was hovering in the air in front of them. It was cackling, its head thrown back into the air. It looked back at the ground directly at Sam and promptly shot an ectoblast out of its mouth. Dash saw Sam’s mouth open the slightest bit and everything slowed down. Danny turned, following the path of the blast but when he tried to fly towards her the ghost grabbed onto him, trapping him. 

This was one of Danny’s best friends. She might hate Dash’s guts but Danny cared for her more than she hated him. 

Without another thought, he pushed himself into a run and sprinted his way across the grass. He put himself between her and the ghost and grabbed her just as the blast hit him in the back.

He could hear Sam scream as they fell to the ground. Tucker was shouting from somewhere else but Dash couldn’t make much out past the ringing in his ears. He could hear scuffling in the air above him but it was muffled. The pain in his back radiated out and he could feel it in every jostle as someone shook his body. 

Everything started fading away and Dash hoped he wasn’t dying. Distantly, he wondered if this is how Danny felt when he died in the portal. 

The voices fell away and so did Dash.

~~~~~~~~~~

Slowly, the world came back to him. The first thing he noticed was the steady beeping nearby. The second thing was how bright the lights were against his eyelids. 

He groaned and he heard some shuffling to his left. Someone placed a hand on his arm. 

“Dash?”

His heart skipped a beat and he slowly pried his eyes open. He was laying in a bed in the hospital and Danny was standing to his left. 

“Danny?” Dash croaked out. He tried to sit up but Danny pushed him back down against his pillows. 

“You shouldn’t move too much. You got hit pretty bad.” 

“You got the ghost though?” Dash asked. 

“Yeah, he got the ghost.”

Sam and Tucker walked into the room and stood next to Danny. 

“Uh, no I asked if Phantom got the-” Dash fumbled, trying to cover it up.

“It’s okay, Dash.” Danny said. “I told them. I thought it might be better if they knew.”

Dash looked at Danny’s two friends. They didn’t look like they were mad at him anymore. Or like they hated him. It was relieving that they knew. Danny didn’t have to keep avoiding them or keep secrets anymore. 

“If we’d known in the first place we could’ve helped, you know.” Sam said, shooting both of them a look. 

“Yeah. A team always needs a tech guy.” Tucker crossed his arms in mock frustration.

“But we do understand why you guys have been acting weird for the past couple months.” Sam turned to look at Dash. “Thank you for helping him even though you didn’t have to.”

Dash nodded, dumbfounded.

She stared at him a moment longer and pulled her gaze away. “And thank you for knocking me out of the way of that hit. Sorry it landed you here.”

Dash shook his head. “You’re Danny’s friends. You’re important to him. I didn’t want you to get hurt because of all this ghost stuff.” 

“That’s a nice thought, but you should also try not to get yourself hurt.” Sam said. 

“Yeah.” Danny frowned. “You promised.” 

Dash shrugged. “We can call it karma.” 

Tucker stepped forward. “We need a name.”

“A name?” Danny looked up at Tucker.

“Yeah, like a cool ghost hunting team name.” He waved his hands in the air. “What about Team Phantom?”

Sam snorted. “That sounds dumb.”

Tucker planted his hands on his hips. “Well, do you have any better ideas then?”

Danny’s hand slowly made his way down from his arm to his hand as they talked. He entwined his fingers with Dash’s and gave him a squeeze. Dash squeezed his hand back. 

Everything would be okay. Everything was okay. 

[evanorbat]

Ok so idk how I came up with this but you guys know how most dp x dc Aus go so what if Danny just outright didn’t know the justice leads existed.

Like if he heard of them from Tucker or Sam he just thinks that their from some superhero movie and we can and to the funny but by having Amity in a full on media black out that Danny lifts (he got baking lessons from Technus and Tucker) because when he found out and ask Tucker to do it he just said that he didn’t think it would be ok to do it so imagine the out right shock of having the Justice League start to investigate Amity.

So on the Justice Leagues side of things they just chilling over at the watch tower only to aficiona alarm to start ringing and when they check what it is they’re staring at the computer for full on minutes processing that they missed a full media black out on one town and Constantine or Zatanna idk who you decide take one look at the screen with the articles on ghosts and start to immediately gather stuff to got there.

So know like an a third of the Justice League is over at Amity investigating everything and when Danny sees them he just goes up to them and says “cool cosplay dudes but there aren’t any conversations soon” and everyone who herd that just fucking states at him like for a solid minute and then just someone idk who maybe superman just asks “do you know who we are?” And Danny just stares at him for a solid 10 seconds and goes “I don’t recognise your character and I’m guessing your from a superhero movie but I don’t watch those so no I don’t really but you do fit the description my friend Tucker gave me on that guy from that movie what was it called again I think it was The Justice League” and everyone just fucking states at him and then someone on the background that overheard the conversation just shouts “IS THAT WHY YOU NEVER TALKED ABOUT THEM!?” and he just turns around and with a look of completar confusion on his face and everyone is just staring at who they think is the most innocent person to exist.

So now we have a JL trying to tell Danny that they’re actual superheroes and Danny’s over there like the most confused person in the world just staring at them while they explain and he’s just internally freaking out cause he did know there where more superheroes and thought that he was alone in this.

This could be so much funnier with it being a demon twins AU or just an AU where he trained with the league of assassins for some time before coming to amity and I just showed that the Justice League is an actual thing because he just thought they were something that Ra’s made up to make his behaviour seem like it was actually for supervillain reasons to keep Danny and Damian from leaving him instead of it actually all being true.

And if we go from that rout and then add Damian and Danny keeping in contact after they separated we have a Danny who think that the only superhero’s to ever exist are the Batfam and now imagine if Damian was there and just goes up to him and straight up punches him and then hugs him mumbling how much of a ducking idiot Danny is and everyone around them is like confused as fuck about this whole interaction because it’s well damian and it’s just a whole bunch of superheroes being confused and almost all of the people overhearing and wanting to do the same thing Damian did because Danny’s a fucking idiot.

If you don’t like it with Danny then imagine it after a fight with one of his rouges Danny as phantom just doesn’t recognise any of them except for the Batfam because of the same reasons as the demon twin AU thing and Damian recognises him even as a ghost just looking at him and the same punch and hug thing happens but now we have an angry Damian just berating Danny on how much of an. airhead he is and it goes on for like an hour with the JL just rebooting on the background and Constantine and Zatanna just running around the whole town looking for the source of the ghost problem.

[hugsandchaos]

AU??

The Fenton’s aren’t exactly ghost hunters, but rather more of ghost researchers. They aren’t very pleased with the laws and acts labeling all ghosts as inhumane when some of those ghosts were once as human as they are. They want to study ghosts, yes, but unlike the GIW, they want to be able to speak with them. They want to learn all they can in a more peaceful manner. And one day, they get that chance.

A breakout occurs at a GIW site miles away and the town is warned of a Level 10 outbreak. The Fentons set out to try to recapture the ghost first to see if they can communicate peacefully with them. Instead of some big, eldritch horror, their tracking devices lead them to what appears to be a 14 year old boy injured, ectoplasm and blood seeping through his wounds.

I haven’t figured out what happens next T_T Also, the reason I put question marks at the top is because my prompt list that stems from this isn’t exactly solid Or committed to this AU 100%.

Prompts!

Sure, it was odd that two kids new to Amity Park suddenly showed up were interested in ghosts, but who was Jack to refuse a lecture or lesson on what he knows about ghosts? Their questions are very good ones, asking things such as “What do they eat?” “What’s their biology?”, ect. They seemed very curious about the anatomy of ghosts, though it seems almost nonexistent.

One day, Maddie began questioning Tucker and Sam’s home lives, though it made it clear she was only trying to make sure they have a place to stay seeing as they appeared out of nowhere. The family started giving them food to take home with them, wherever it was, and offered them to stay the night if they ever needed. Despite their reassurances that it wouldn’t need to happen, they appear one night asking if the offer still stood. But they weren’t alone. Struggling to stay awake in Tucker’s arms was a boy with black hair and several injuries, many of them seeping out both blood and ectoplasm.

Prompt 2

Trying to convince a recently escaped level 10 injured ghost boy that the space-themed plushie you were offering him for emotional support wasn’t a weapon or trap was tougher than Jazz expected. But then again, she never expected it to happen to begin with.

Prompt 3

Maddie never really thought about adoption. She believed her family to be complete with her loving husband and amazing daughter, but after a while of seeing Danny safe and happy in their house, she knew now that she was going to adopt this child no matter what the GIW have to say about it.

[tanglepelt]

What caused the grave?

Ao3

An explosion in the lab leads to the Fenton blaming Phantom for their son's death while they grieve.

This is what actually happened to lead to that point.

***

Just yesterday there was one less grave in the ground. One less tombstone. No new mourners no new grief in town.

 Now the cemetery was full. Students from the school. Those who remained for the summer. Dash standing in the back lost in thought.

 Two parents were lost in grief.

 An Older sister is not yet back from her summer quarter.

 Two friends who hadn’t even shown up.

 The tombstone reading: Here lies Daniel Fenton

  At the front of the grave Jack and Maddie Fenton grieving for their son. Blaming Phantom on anyone who would listen.

**

Danny’s worst fear was coming true.

 Starting a week ago when the guys in white showed up at his house. They weren’t after him, he could handle escaping them again. No, they were here for his parents.

 The GIW and his parents working together.

 Launching one missile wasn’t enough. He stopped that one in the nick of time. Teaming up with his rogues. Managing to stop the missile from the ghost zone.

 He just had to stop this one from launching, just like before.

 This time it was happening in his own home. The very lab his accident happened. Where he had already died once. Jazz wasn’t home to help, long gone at college. She left in the fall and stayed. Fully attending to finish early, attending through the summer. Tucker and Sam are both away from town Sam to some rich people's event and Tucker to a tech camp.

 Danny’s phone and all communication devices were confiscated. A security risk. Neither the GIW nor his Parents trusted him not to tattle. He could still do this.

 He only had to convince one group.

 Getting his parents away from the lab was difficult. Never stopping from their work, he never could get a word in. The GIW would never listen. Danny didn’t even bother with them. Quantum physics meant nothing to them. Those in white would just doom both dimensions. That left his parents.

 The ones who spent their whole lives hunting ghosts.

 Hinting them for sport, those who created weapons to kill them.

 All he could do was hope they listened for once.

 If they didn’t, he would have to act. Potentially out himself to both groups. No matter the cost both dimensions would remain standing. Frostbite, Pandora, Sam, Tucker, Jazz and so many others would be counting on this. Counting on him to solve this problem.

 With the portal shut in preparations, no one could get here. Only those who could create portals. Wulf and such a select few. No way to know the danger coming their way. No reason to suspect the ill intent

from the earthly realm.

 Clockwork would know.

 He doesn’t tend to meddle.

 Managing to rip his parents away from the GIW. Claiming he fell down the stairs. He knows they love him; Danny knows they care. He can use that to his advantage to get their attention. Just because they care doesn’t mean they listen. Jazz and he could explain until they're blue in the face ghost aren’t unfeeling.

 They have tried. They always countered.  Using their “research” and science to disagree. Aways ignored the true evidence.

 Danny would have to play on humanity. All the humans are in danger. Make them think they could be some saviors to humanity. Maybe that could work.

 Of course, it didn’t.

 Every point he made got thrown to the side just as normal. This whole science thing was far above his head. The ghost zone wasn’t even its own dimension, no it was just a little tiny pocket. Nothing would happen. Danny had asked them to send in a probe to see the vast size.

 All the so-called evidence came from fishing poles. The two never bothered to explore it themselves.

 Never mapped it.

 Never even gauged its size.

 NO.

 Nothing.

 For scientists, they were too lost in bias. Refusing to look at the other side. Only taking evidence that supported their cause.

 A look around the lab a countdown was visible. Agents swarming around,  blackboards and whiteboards filled with calculations. A drawing of an explosion, that had to be his dad’s contribution, in the middle of the board.

 Two hours before launch. He didn’t have much time left.

 To make a bad situation even worse he got sent to his room.

 His parents claimed it was for his safety, that his worrying could get him, and others hurt. It was just to keep him out. No doubt they didn’t want to continue listening to him arguing. He was using evidence and scientific theories. They weren’t.

 Why would they allow themselves to be outsmarted?

 Especially by a C student.

 Wasting an hour, trying to get some means of contact out. To get a line to someone. Even trying to go out the window. All with no luck.

 Thankfully No one was guarding the door. He should have checked that first, rather than waste an hour. Perhaps simple sabotage would work. Go to the lab try to apologize and break something. It would just be Fenton's luck at that point.

 The Fenton’s were quite good at breaking stuff after all.

 Danny never made it to the lab. Being brought up. An agent is now stationed outside of his room. His mother only chided him for putting himself at risk. No, yelling to begging as he was brought back upstairs was listened to. Back to square one.

 He only had 30 minutes until the planned launch. That time may not even be accurate. That was just the end goal. He wasn’t in the lab, he didn’t know.

 With no other option left. The room flashed white.

 Turning invisible and flying through the walls, he got to the lab in record time. The floor was flooded with white suits. Agent K and O talking with his parents, the missile is pointed right at the portal door. The countdown already commencing.

 Five minutes.

In five minutes, the portal would open.

In five minutes both dimensions could be destroyed.

Every universe and every dimension could be destroyed if he didn’t stop them.

 Danny could only think of one solution. Jazz always said their parents would accept him. Once they realized he was part ghost they would change their minds. That everything the two had been saying would finally click for them.

 All it got was him being held back. Screams about him overshadowing their son, him using the body as a disguise. Their eyes full of hatred. The GIW restraining him. He got nowhere. The situation only got worse.

 The countdown still going down.

Second, by second, getting closer to their deaths.

 They hadn’t managed to get a power restraint on him. Danny’s struggle made it difficult. Countdown still going. The portal opens the room turning green.

 Only two minutes left.

 Danny managed to cover the portal in ice before the cuff clicked. His ice stood firm. It would stay until he willed it away. The missile was still in position. Still aimed at the portal.

 Breaking free from the hold, he raced to the missile. Getting by anyone in his way. Pushing the button that would launch it. A 30-second countdown began. Screams to abort, but nothing happens. It wasn’t designed to be stopped.

 Danny couldn’t stop them on his own. He could destroy them. Even if it was designed to destroy ectoplasm it was still a projectile. It would still collide with the ice wall. It would destroy the lab, the portal, and all the work in the lab. Everything they had worked on; all his parent’s work would be gone.

 They didn’t believe in the cloud. Only physical storage, all in the lab.

 Danny got pushed to the side as everyone began to evacuate. He wouldn’t get out. Both worlds would survive. It would be worth it.

 The plan worked better than attended. The missile breaking up hit other inventions. Other hazards, fires explosions it all went up. The entire building went up. As the smoke cleared up FentonWorks was gone. Only the few who managed to get out of the building survived. The lab, the portal it was all gone.

 The only thing left was for the grieving parents to bury an empty casket.

 No one noticed the black hair, a blue-eyed child leaving town. The one with a medallion around his neck. He would never be seen again. A total of four amity parkers that day were never seen in town again.

[lavendarlily]

ectoberhaunt day 11: calm @ectoberhaunt

the one where i write a ghost nip fic

words: 2744

read it on ao3

cw: underage drug use yes and no?

tucker and sam just want danny to take a night off.

this is so cringe sorry

Being strung out was becoming Danny’s default these days. 

For whatever reason, ghost activity had jumped up significantly in the last week. Even if he wanted to investigate it further, he couldn’t, because there were just that many ghosts to deal with. 

Saturday evening rolled around, and to Danny’s absolute shock, he’d been able to lay in bed undisturbed now for twenty minutes. He even considered risking it and finally taking a shower. It’d probably been a good three to four days since his last, and chasing after loose spirits tended to get one pretty sweaty.

Danny raised an arm and sniffed. Oof. Yeah, he needed to shower. 

He walked across the hall to the bathroom and started the water. While he typically didn’t mind cold showers due to his body temperature, a hot one sounded like a blessing on his aching body. 

Danny peeled off his clothes, and held back a groan. Jeez, he really needed a break. At this point he wasn’t sure if his healing was slowing down as a result of his tiredness, or the beatings were so constant that he never had enough time to heal before the next one. 

Once he was clean (was it actually possible to have that much dirt under your fingernails?), Danny dared to put on an old hoodie and sweatpants that had been all but forgotten the last few weeks. Peak comfort. He wandered back to his bedroom, and lost all sense of peace from his shower when he found two people in his room that he was not expecting. 

“Jesus! What are you guys doing here?” he yelped.

Sam and Tucker stared back at him with shocked expressions.

“What? Why are you looking at me like I’m the intruder?”

“Dude…look at yourself,” Tucker said in a low voice.

Danny looked down at the rest of his body. Where his hoodie and sweatpants were only a moment ago had been replaced by his hazmat suit, and his feet were now hovering a few inches above the ground.

He’d transformed to Phantom without even meaning to. Danny exhaled and closed his eyes slowly, then dropped his ghostly form. 

“Shit guys, I’m so sorry. Everything going on lately has me a little jumpy.”

Tucker and Sam exchanged a look.

“That’s what we wanted to talk to you about. We’re worried that you aren’t taking care of yourself,” Sam began.

“And we’re not letting you get worse,” Tucker finished. He turned to fish something out of his backpack behind him, and held out a small vial to Danny, who looked at it questioningly.

Sam noticed his hesitance and explained, “It’s something we got from Frostbite. We reached out to him because we’ve been so concerned. He told us this would help you cool off, and you deserve a night of rest.”

Let it be known that Danny always appreciated his friends looking out for him. He knew he probably would’ve died-died the first week of having his ghost powers if they weren’t there. But this was something they didn’t understand.

“I can’t just leave the city unprotected,” he argued. 

“We know that - which is why Jazz and your parents are patrolling tonight,” Tucker assured. 

“Guys I really don’t think-”

“About yourself? Your well-being? Yeah, we noticed.”

The glare Sam received from Tucker prompted her to backtrack.

“We care a lot about you, Danny. But even heroes need a break.” She grabbed the small vial from Tucker and placed it in Danny’s hand. “It’s just one night.” 

Danny looked at the small vial of…whatever it was…and back at his friends. Deep down, he knew they were right - between his parents and Jazz things would most likely be okay for the night. And if what he was holding was really supposed to help him chill…then maybe he could stop worrying about it altogether and just enjoy a night off. 

He raised the vial to eye level and studied the contents. Inside was what seemed to be a glowling, finely ground substance, definitely ghostly in nature. 

He squinted at it. “Do you guys even know what this is?”

They both shrugged. “Frostbite said it was a natural medicine. Other than that, he didn’t offer much,” Tucker explained.

“Do I…just eat it?” Danny asked.

Sam bit her lip. “What if you smoked it?” she cautiously suggested. Out of the three of them, Sam was the most adventurous in…exploring self-medication. Danny shied away from it, among other mind-altering substances, in fear of losing control of his ghost half, dreading it could result in a numerous amount of bad endings. While Tucker wasn’t opposed to it, he knew he was better off dead if his parents found out. 

“I don’t know…,” Danny trailed off, as Sam already had repossessed the vial and began grabbing various items from her backpack. In a matter of seconds, Sam triumphantly held up a rolled piece of paper containing the contents of the vial. She held out a lighter in her other hand, and Danny hesitantly grabbed the paraphernalia.

When he didn’t make a move, Sam rolled her eyes and grabbed the cone from him, and placed it between his lips. Snatching the lighter, she struck a flame and held it to the end of what Danny decided to just call a joint. 

“Now just take a gentle breath,” she coaxed. 

Danny sucked in a shallow breath and immediately coughed at the discomfort in his throat, hunching over with his hands on his knees. Sam held the smoking paper away from him, and patted his back, giggling.

“You okay champ?” she laughed.

Danny glared up at her. “I knew this wasn’t a good idea.”

“Come on dude, you barely gave it a chance,” Tucker argued from the bed.

“I really don’t know how I feel about my friends peer pressuring me to do drugs,” he grumbled, righting himself. He nonetheless grabbed the joint back from Sam and stuck the paper between his lips. 

“Danny, shut up and smoke the ghost weed.”

“It’s literally prescribed. Don’t be a pussy,” Tucker jeered. 

If looks could kill, the one Danny sent to Tucker would’ve had him six feet under immediately. He turned to Sam and gave her nod, allowing her to once again strike the lighter. This time he felt better prepared for the sensation, sucking a small amount of smoke in and allowing it to sit in his lungs, before exhaling it out. 

Sam gave him a devilish grin. “I’m so glad to have finally corrupted you.”

“This is different.”

She raised her eyebrows, but didn’t say anything further on the matter, instead chastising him for letting the joint go out as she relit it again . 

HIs two friends refused to do anything else until Danny had smoked a sufficient amount of what they decided to refer to as “ghost weed”, then decided to go downstairs and set up for a movie. Tucker went into the kitchen to make some popcorn while Sam stayed with Danny in the living room to pick out a movie. 

“How about a nature documentary? This one just came out and it’s supposed to be amazing.” She scrolled through the different episodes and landed on one about African wildlife.

Danny was indifferent - he figured he’d probably end up asleep by the time the intro rolled; a nap on the couch was calling his name. 

The trio settled in, and Sam pressed play.

Maybe ten minutes into the documentary, Danny felt a little buzz in his head and a numbness in his body. 

Twenty minutes in, he felt a little delirious, but nothing more than that.

Thirty minutes in, he was laughing silently, but so hard that his body was shaking and tears were streaming down his face. Sam must’ve caught him from the corner of her eye, because she turned and asked, “Oh my god, are you okay Danny? What’s wrong?”

“Is he crying?” was Tucker’s response to his friend’s behavior.

Danny finally let out an audible laugh and pointed at the screen, which was currently showing two male giraffes fighting for dominance.

“They’re just- fucking look at them- fucking noodles just whacking- I can’t,” he stuttered between laughs, almost breathless. 

Sam and Tucker exchanged a look as their friend completely unraveled before them.

Danny continued to lose it throughout the entire giraffe segment. The film then shifted and brought them to Madagascar, introducing the lemurs and their agility in the trees. Danny then began pointing at the TV with finger guns, providing “pew pew” noises as he pretended to shoot at the animals while they jumped from tree to tree on the screen. An ecto-ray came through from one of his “pews” and blasted a hole straight through the television. Danny’s eyes went wide before he fully lost it.

“DID YOU GUYS SEE THAT?” he cried as he rolled on the floor laughing. “I shot- I shot a hole through the TV oh my god guys this is the most ridiculous shit ever I can’t-”

He continued to laugh uncontrollably, holding his stomach as he laid on the floor.

“Oh, he’s high as fuck,” observed Tucker. 

“Best to just let him get it out of his system,” Sam said. “As long as he’s not freaking out, I’m not concerned.”

“What do we do now? TV’s obviously busted.”

“I’M HUNGRY,” whined the voice from the floor. 

“...Guess I’m ordering pizza then,” Sam replied, reaching for her phone and dialing up the local pizza place. 

Danny climbed back up on the sofa, laying across the two. “What happened to the movie?” he pouted. 

“Dude, you literally blasted a hole through the TV,” Tucker deadpanned. 

“Nooooo it came like that,” Danny argued. “I wanna see more animals.”

“Sorry bud.” 

Sam finished her call and returned to the two boys. “Pizza’s ordered - now what?” (this question was more directed at Tucker for obvious reasons).

Danny had slumped back down towards the floor - his upper half still on the sofa while his lower body hung off. “I’m hungryyyyy,” he whined again.

“Pizza should only take like twenty minutes,” Sam said. 

“But I want it nowwww.”

Sam huffed, then stood, looking down at him. “Fine, let’s go to the kitchen and get you a snack.” She reached out her hand for him to take, and led him into the other room, Tucker in tow.

She sat him down at the table, and pulled her phone back out. Pulling up Tik Tok, she shoved the phone into Danny’s hands in hopes of keeping him distracted for the time being. The mish-mash of ten second music clips took over the kitchen while Sam explored the cabinets. In the fridge she found a bowl of grapes that she lazily slid in front of Danny, who was now completely enraptured in the social media before him. 

“He’s like a toddler,” Tucker said. “And we’re literally babysitting him.”

“This is kinda what we wanted though? At least he’s got his mind off things. Just wish we didn’t have to literally drug him to get him to take a break,” Sam said, sitting and resting her chin on her fists. She added, “I don’t mind babysitting one night if it means he gets a night of rest.”

The doorbell rang, interrupting their conversation.

“Must be the pizza,” she said, then stood up and went to answer the door. When she returned with the food, she expected to see the boys how she left them, but was greeted with a much stranger sight.

She hadn’t even been gone that long.

Danny’s seat was now empty. Instead, he had moved on to singing and dancing around the kitchen. The song Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! was now playing through the speakers of her phone. She glanced at Tucker, who was not so secretly recording their friend making the kitchen his stage. 

Laughing, Sam set down the pizzas, and was immediately grabbed by Danny, who started twirling her around. He paused only to lift Tucker from his seat to join his dance party, which very quickly devolved into his two friends watching him with a mix of amusement and relief. 

It’d been so long since they’d seen this side of him. 

The song ended, earning a frown from Danny. He went to snatch the phone and replay it, but Sam intercepted. 

“Hey, you wanted food, remember?” She reminded him, as she went to collect three plates and began serving out the pizza. 

“Pizza? For me?” Danny looked like a kid on Christmas morning as he stared at the hot piece of greasy, cheesy goodness in front of him. He dug in, moans of pleasure escaping as he inhaled his slice.

Tucker scrunched his nose. “Dude. It’s just pizza. You’re eating it, not having sex with it.”

“Mmph it’s so good,” he replied through a mouthful. “I’m so horny for pizza.”

“Danny! ”

Once he was satiated, Danny slumped back into his seat, eyes closed and a small smile on his face. “I wanna go flying,” he said dreamily. “Flying sounds nice.” 

“Not sure that’s such a good idea,” Tucker cautioned. Danny opened his eyes and looked at his friend annoyed. 

“I want to fly,” he repeated stubbornly. Before Sam or Tucker could say anything more, he shifted and disappeared through the ceiling. The two scrambled from their seats and bolted towards the roof of the residence, hoping to catch their friend before he flew off to who knows where in his altered state of mind. 

Once on the roof, they desperately looked in every direction for Danny to no avail. A sudden chill went up their spines, their only warning before a “BOO!” startled them from behind. 

“Danny, what the hell!” Sam yelled, the ghost before them hysterically laughing. 

“Get it guys? Because I’m a ghost? I totally got you!” he cried. His laughter slowed a little, a wave of realization washing over his face. He looked down at his hands and whispered. “I’m a ghost.” He returned his gaze to his friends. 

“Why am I a ghost?” he asked softly.

Sam groaned internally and threw her head back - this was heading towards a freak out, if she knew any better. Tucker reached out towards him, sensing the same thing. 

Danny backed away from the touch, his expression moving from confusion to sorrow. 

His head was swirling and his thoughts hitting him like bullets he couldn't defend against. It was all coming at him so fast, circling his mind again and again. He was a ghost, he wasn’t human, he was a freak, who could love a freak? 

“I’m a freak,” he whispered to no one in particular. While he was distracted by his own thoughts, Sam and Tucker leapt at their friend, trapping him in the middle of a hug. This time he didn’t fight their affection, and let them bring him towards the ground. 

“You’re not a freak,” Tucker said from his side of Danny. “You’re a hero.”

“You put everyone else first, even if they don’t deserve it,” Sam added. “You bring so much good to the world.”

“And we love you, no matter if you’re human, ghost, or something in between,” Tucker finished.

The body between them let out a shaky breath, and suddenly the cold mass became warm again as he shifted back to his human half.

“Sorry guys, whatever is in my system definitely has me all wonky,” Danny croaked, causing his friends to chuckle. 

“You don’t say?” Tucker laughed. 

“How are you feeling now?” Sam asked. 

Danny sighed, then, “I feel like that short existential crisis sobered me up a bit, but I’m not as erratic anymore.” He grinned sheepishly. “Maybe we just go back and finish the documentary?”

Tucker scoffed. “Danny, you broke the TV, remember?” 

Danny’s eyes went wide. “Oh shit, I did do that. How am I gonna explain that to my parents?”

“Ghost attack,” his friends said in unison. 

“I mean, that’s not technically a lie.” Danny shifted back to his ghostly alter-ego and stood. “Why don’t we go to my room and watch something on my laptop then?” His friends smiled up at him and took his hands, sinking back down into the home. The three of them somehow managed to squeeze onto his small bed with the computer at the foot playing the rest of the movie. At some point, their chatter and laughter trailed off into soft snores as Danny was accompanied in his first peaceful night of sleep in weeks. 

[avelnfear]

Chapter Thirteen

Masterpost

Sam couldn’t stop pacing the edge of the Isle of the Phantom Fright and Grave. It was a long walk, but she’d already completed it ten times by now. Danny was bringing some people from Gotham to the Phantom Isle, and she couldn’t figure out how to feel about it. She’d always been told that her emotions were too intense, but this was one of the few times she actually agreed.

She and the others had all seen what memories Danny had been willing to show thanks to the powers of a Viewing Room, but that wasn’t enough, was too much, was- Ancients she didn’t know! Apparently, according to the stupid old Clock, she and the others would regain their memories of the past when they reached a certain point in their Existence, but she didn’t want to wait that long, couldn’t wait that long.

These people were some she had likely never met, people she didn’t know how to defend against, people that could betray Danny without her ever knowing because she was too busy helping to do damage control on the last betrayal. If the people were anything like the memories, they were highly trained and capable of doing damage to Danny that she wouldn’t be able to help undo. If they were anything like the memories, then they would never willingly cause that type of damage.

She knew that Damian knew of one past life, probably the one Danny had shown them snippets of, but she didn’t know if any of the others remembered. Sam was still haunted by the look on Danny’s face when she’d asked who all had the memories. There had to be something that Danny wasn’t telling them, but she couldn’t interrogate him about it when talking about it hurt him so much.

Sam huffed as she spun around to begin pacing again, the black and green of her skirt flaring around her in a satisfying way. She passed the beautiful architecture of the buildings on the Isle, all themed around different members of their little group, some of which probably belonged to the very people Danny was currently escorting here, the people to blame for her doing much more walking than she’d planned to today.

Footsteps on the path around her alerted her to an approaching person that could only be Jazz. Danny and Elle were with the group, along with Damian and Talia, and Tucker was locked away in his spiraling tower, trying his best to make sure Jack would never find Danny. With the footsteps came an overwhelming feeling of calm-soothing-happy-peace-arrival. The feeling oozed through the air in a way that made Sam’s spine crawl in an odd way.

“Glad to see someone’s in a happy mood.” Sam’s voice was low and grumbly, making her sound more like an immature child than she’d wanted.

“It is understandable why you would not feel the same, you don’t feel like you have enough information. You aren’t seeing or feeling what I am, what they are. Come, walk with me.” Jazz’s voice was calm, and her face was fixed into the expression she wore when she knew something that would help if only she could figure out how to share it without breaking any vows or rules.

Sam sighed, letting the tension in her body relax as she nodded. “This had better not make me late to greet them though.”

“Relax,” Came the knowing reply, “Danny will be a little late due to the changes the Realms are going through right now, he forgot to account for the moving of Skulker’s Hunt-Lair due to what today is.”

Sam scowled to be reminded of the main reason she was so worried besides the guests that would be arriving. She kept her mouth shut, knowing Jazz would just give her a vague answer about Danny knowing what he was doing when it came to this. 

They walked down a path that hadn’t been there a few seconds before, neither batting an eye because of how normal of an occurrence this was. It could only have been about a minute before they stopped in front of a sprawling landscape that looked like a lot of different types of animal habitats had been combined in a way that didn’t quite make sense to Sam, but she appreciated the care the plants had reviewed even if she’d never been able to enter this space. There was a cabin in the center area that looked cozy and easily defensible. All in all, it didn’t look like a horrible place, even if she wasn’t as good at Danny or Jazz at using a person’s surroundings and mannerisms to gauge their personality.

“What do you see?” The question felt calm on the surface, but a strange sense of anticipation laid under it, like a tiger in the shade.

Sam raised an eyebrow at Jazz before telling her about the observations Sam had made. Jazz nodded before saying, “I see Damian.”

Sam straightened, suddenly tense for an entirely different reason than before. No one had been able to figure out who the strange zones not claimed by any of them belonged to, but now Jazz was telling her that this strange field was Damian’s? Suddenly, the purpose of their walk hit her with the force of a fully charged ecto-laser. Jazz was trying to comfort her by telling her which place belonged to which person after letting her observe it with an open mind.

She suddenly felt much more enthusiastic for what was to come. That was, until a thought crossed her mind. “I’m not continuing this if it will stop me from being there when they arrive.” Her tone was one that usually brokered no arguments, but one could never be too sure with the Nightengale siblings.

“It will be fine, Danny forgot to calculate some islands shifting, so they’ll be a bit longer than earlier estimates. The latest we will be is a few moments after they arrive.” The look Jazz gave her was knowing, and the feeling that swamped Sam was one that told her to listen and follow without giving too much away.

“Lead on then.” Her tone was much more defeated than she felt, but it was the only form of rebellion she would give, playing it up was a necessity.

Duke, Stephanie, Cass, Alfred, Tim, and Bruce were all locked behind Clockwork Spoiler Fences. Meaning she only saw a wall of clocks rather than the actual interior. She was starting to get frustrated when they approached a massive big top tent surrounded by all sorts of interesting and out of place items. 

Jazz didn’t even ask a question this time, probably sensing Sam’s rising frustration. “The area belongs to Dick, it breathes him if you listen close enough. The out of place objects are symbols of those he considers family, those he would do anything to protect. Do you understand why I’m telling you this, why I’m showing you this?”

Sam almost snapped a rude answer out of frustration, but then some of the things in the yard registered to her. They looked newer then the others, less sure in a way that she couldn’t describe. There was a tech filled area that kind of looked like Tucker’s work area when he found a project that he couldn’t put down, there was a small library section filled with psychology books and notebooks with a good light above it, there was a mini greenhouse, and there was an area that looked like it was ripped from the night sky to be made into a nice lounging area with plenty of room for lots of people.

“I. You.” It was like the frustration drained out of her as the biggest  realization of the night hit her. “Dick is like Danny, very family oriented. It doesn’t matter if the others were locked behind fences because Dick isn’t. You wanted me to know that Danny trusting them has a reason. You’ve definitely seen more memories than us and know that I’d trust them anyway, but I needed to calm down first. I get it. We can go back now.”

Jazz gave her a bittersweet smile that had her hackles raising. “We aren’t quite done yet. Follow.”

Sam was nervous, yet she followed, there was nothing else to do. They came upon what looked like a building that would definitely fit into her mental image of Gotham, a bizarre mix of styles that somehow fit together, likely paying homage to several different stages in the person’s life. Most of the windows were covered in locks and ways to stop people from seeing inside, even far up the building. Sam could see a few traps that looked well made.

She looked to Jazz, confused, only to see a look that she couldn’t decipher, too many emotions in so few space. Turning back to the building, she looked closer, finding signs of wear and tear and a few hasty looking patch jobs. A couple sections looked burned, a few had odd water damage, and a few looked like they were being held together by pure will after an explosion. There were some paint jobs that looked like they were done with human blood, and there were some parts that looked like they would fit a mansion better.

Looking even closer, she saw something that stopped all the thoughts in her head. Something that stopped her heart, stopped her breathing, and had her feeling like she was falling. Hidden in a way most people wouldn’t catch were symbols, ones she could barely read, Existence Speak given written form. Most were written in a hand she recognized, Danny’s, but some of it was written by someone she’d never met. That wasn’t what had stopped everything about her though. Hidden just a little better were symbols she did recognize, could read, and never thought she’d see.

“I see Jason.” The words were near breathless, full of sorrow and hope and so many other emotions. They sounded almost like they hurt to say, pulled from unwilling lips in a way that had Sam’s emotions rising and swirling with defensive intent.

“Who was going to tell me Jason was Danny’s betrothed?”

~`~`~

Dick couldn’t put his finger on it, but something was off. He’d known Danny for close to a year now, long enough to know at least a little about how he operated, and Danny wasn’t straying from that pattern. It rubbed him the wrong way in such a way that he couldn’t verbalize it. Jason was off too and not just off in the way he’d been lately. The family had gotten used to the new normal, and Dick seemed to be the only one to notice something was very off.

If he was being perfectly honest, Dick expected there to be some tension in the air, a group of them was going to another dimension that contained all the afterlives and more, anyone would be tense at that. However, even those one would expect not to be tense had this sense of urgency underlaying everything they did.

He was getting better at knowing when to push and when not to, thanks to all the therapy he’d finally signed up for, but he couldn’t seem to find a way to safely navigate whatever was going on today. Figuring it would help soothe his nerves, and trusting his family to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid while he was zoned out, he went over his list for the day.

He had brought along his gift for Tim, so it wasn’t that he was forgetting anything. He had double checked to make sure their alibis were as good as possible. Dick had even taken the time to arrange back-up alibis that would work in some of the cases the originals would have failed. He’d done everything to plan for as much as he could, so the tension wasn’t coming from him in any way.

Then what could possibly be the reason? They were doing this trip for Jason, Danny had agreed, Damian and Nellie were excited for the trip until today, Talia was doing her best to make sure everyone had a good time, Bruce had done as much research as possible, Tim had asked every question he could think of, and the others were filled in on what all was going down. There was no logical reason for this much tension to be happening.

He was dimly aware of the group entering a warehouse and boarding an insane looking vehicle, was it frog shaped or was that just him stressing too much to see it clearly?, but he refused to focus until he figured out where the tension was coming from.

He didn’t get much further into his thoughts before someone was talking at him. “Why?” He internally winced at the word he hadn’t meant to blurt.

His awareness of his surroundings came back as he found himself staring into the emotionless face of Nellie. “Buckle before we have to host another funeral for you. Once was bad enough, don’t make it happen twice.”

Every thought left his head as he sank into a seat and numbly snapped the many straps around his body, there were more safely straps here than in the Bat Jet. As soon as he was fully strapped in, her words sank straight to his bones, giving him a horrible idea that he immediately brushed aside to focus on the world around him. That couldn’t be the reason for the tension, Danny and the others had to be more aware than that.

The strange ship they were in jolted forwards and suddenly they were in a wash of green. It was close enough to a Lazarus Pit that Dick knew the entire family would be on edge, but he found that he couldn’t rip his eyes away from it long enough to double check. Something about the place seemed so familiar, so… he couldn’t even figure out what. The tension from before fell to the second priority as he struggled to see as much of the world as he could.

“The Nightingale Dimension Hopper is completely opaque on the outside yet completely see through on the inside without showing any of the things that make it function.” There was pride in Damian’s voice, pride Dick never thought he would get to hear about anyone but Baby Bat’s animals.

He shifted slightly in his seat in order to see the screens better and let out a yelp of surprise when his seat adjusted itself so that he was facing the wall. There was purple spiraling into the green around him, the combo should have brought to mind the Joker, but all Dick could think about was his parents, oddly enough.

“Did we forget to mention the seats will adjust themselves based on who is seated in them?” Nellie sounded like she was going to say more when she was cut off by the slightly tense voice of Danny.

“Explanations can wait, I’m switching off of autopilot, there will be more shifts than originally calculated for. Everyone needs to be completely buckled in, now. Including you Nellie.”

There was a whine even as Dick heard the sound of her complying with her parent’s orders. The Hopper jolted before darting down in a dizzying spiral, Dick’s chair adjusting to let him see the doors snapping into rightful place mere seconds after they passed. Suddenly, they started heading up at a slow pace, still weaving around doors that shifted around them in a way that simply felt right. 

The trip was filled with sudden shifts in speed and direction as Danny continued to skillfully avoid doors that hadn’t been there a few seconds earlier. There were some near collisions that pulled gasps from those near Dick, but he couldn’t figure out why. It was clear to him why Danny needed to make those changes, they would have been hit otherwise.

Despite the strange flying that followed a pattern Dick was beginning to think the others couldn’t see, the flight was going fairly smoothly until Dick shouted a wordless warning right as Danny slammed on the brakes, hard. They came to a stop so sudden that it produced a screeching noise from someone in the room.

“Why did you stop?” Bruce’s gruff voice demanded seconds before a massive island snapped into place with a sense of purpose. 

Dick didn’t know what he was feeling, what he was thinking, or why it happened, but a weapons deck that just looked like a wall of weapons suddenly appeared in front of him. He ignored every button except one he knew would increase their speed. His hand was already moving towards it as Damian shouted from behind him, “Hit it!”

If he thought the Hopper was fast before, it was nothing compared to this. The speed they were going was hard to describe. Dick tried to think of something he could use to explain this to those not here, but the only thing he could come up with didn’t make sense. After all, how could a ship outspeed a Flash, but that was exactly what it felt like. Dick could almost physically feel time slowing down as the Hopper accelerated to speeds that could only be described as impossible.

As suddenly as the speed started, it stopped, which definitely should have snapped their necks. It made perfect sense to Dick that it wouldn’t, however, because it was an invention Danny made, so of course it wouldn’t kill those Danny invited to board.

Wait a minute, why would he know that?

A/N: I won't be tagging anymore people after this post, please just subscribe to the masterpost.

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[brokeitwiththepowerofmathamatics]

All This for New Clothes

Danny needed a favor, and while he didn't want to ask Vlad for help. He wasn't expecting Vlad to look at him with disappointment and say, "Daniel, I want you to be my apprentice; of course I’ll help! Why wouldn’t I?"

Vlad blinked as he processed what Danny had said, or rather what he had demanded. But after a rather excruciating silence that began to get uncomfortable, Vlad narrowed his eyes, sighed, and uttered with the most disappointed tone Danny had ever heard from him: “Daniel, I want you to be my apprentice; of course I’ll help! Why wouldn’t I?”

Danny frowned and narrowed his eyes, trying to find the trick in that statement. The words took him by surprise. He looked Vlad up and down, only finding disappointment in his gaze.  He knew Vlad. Vlad was a creep, a weirdo, and a loser. There had to be a reason why Vlad was willing to help.

Normally, Danny would never actually stoop so low to ask Vlad for help, but well…

He needed a suit in less than twenty-four hours, and he didn’t even know where to get one.

Vlad stood up from his desk and walked around the large slab of mahogany. He pulled a phone out of a pocket inside his suit jacket (and just why was he wearing his suit this late at night, anyways?) as he walked to the door, where he paused to type something in his phone, before looking up. He waved to have Danny follow him. “Come along, Daniel.”

Danny hated when people called him Daniel. It bothered him. The only people who called him Daniel were people he either didn’t know, or who were talking down to him.

But he also knew Vlad wouldn’t stop that, even if he asked him to.

However, as Danny walked with Vlad through his mansion, the silence began to get to him. Danny didn’t do silence. He always had noise around him; games, music, bantering with ghosts, joking with Sam and Tucker…

The whirl of the portal…

No, Danny didn’t do silence.

So he decided to ask the question. “Why do you do that?”

Vlad paused and looked up from his phone. He tilted his head and glanced between here and the door to his office, and then looked back at Danny with a raised eyebrow. “Do what?”

“That…” Danny repeated, getting an eye roll out of Vlad. “You always call me Daniel. I’ve told you not to.”

“Ah…” Vlad said, looking forward and continuing to walk. Danny followed a step behind him, half expecting Vlad to ignore him entirely. “The reason why I call you Daniel, is… well… to be frank, is to show respect.”

“You’re… showing me respect by not calling me what I want you to?” Danny scoffed as he folded his arms. He didn’t break stride, instead continuing to walk with Vlad, though he was beginning to wonder why they weren’t just flying where they needed to go.  

Vlad let out a hum. “I suppose that’s one way to look at it,” he muttered. “No, I call you Daniel instead of Danny because Danny is what one would call a friend or a child. I call you by your given name because while I do mock you for your age, to truly treat you as a child would be a disservice to what you are.”

“A halfa like you?” Danny scoffed again.

“No; a warrior, and a threat,” Vlad said, stopping for just a moment to give Danny all of his attention. Danny paused as well, taking a step back as Vlad focused on him. But just as quickly, Vlad continued again, leaving Danny scrambling to catch up.

“A threat?” Danny muttered. He couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice as he caught up with Vlad again.

This time, Vlad scoffed. He shook his head and said, “Come now, Daniel, you don’t really believe that you aren’t a threat? You have had your powers for, what? A year? And while you have never really beaten me, you’ve gotten close. Closer than any other being in the ghost zone.”

“You mean you didn’t get your butt handed to you by Pariah?”

“Pariah might have won the battle, but Daniel,” Vlad began, looking at Danny. He held out his hand in front of him and smiled as a glow began to emanate from his hand. “He did not win the war.”

Danny’s eyes widened as a crown appeared in Vlad’s hand. The burnished metal glowed in his hand, five spikes reaching up toward the sky. A heartbeat later, flames burst out from within it, obscuring the two spikes furthest away from Danny and giving it a shape he knew very well.  

The Crown of Fire vanished with a wave of Vlad’s hand, but Danny’s eyes stared, transfixed, at where it had been. “You grabbed that? When?”

Vlad frowned. “Don’t you remember? You nearly died piloting your parents' prototype of the… ugh…” Vlad groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose, “Fenton Ecto-Skeleton… Couldn’t your parents just have named it the Ecto-Skeleton?”

Danny shrugged. “It’s a branding thing.”

“Quite,” Vlad sighed, shaking his head and continuing. He led Danny into the foyer of his mansion before going to the front door. “Hold that thought.” Vlad hummed, pausing at the door. He turned to face Danny as he pressed his hand against the doorknob. “The chauffeur is here, and while I could wipe his memories, I’d rather not go through that effort.”

Vlad opened the door to the night air, indifferent to the fact that Danny had frozen to the spot. He didn’t know that was a thing Vlad could do, and he suddenly became aware that he didn’t know at all what Vlad was capable of.

Danny didn’t know what he himself was capable of.

Noticing that Vlad was halfway to the limo (and wow, Vlad just had a limo on speed dial?) Danny jumped and started walking down the front steps to the vehicle. The doors closed on their own behind him, and he glanced back at them before Vlad cleared his throat.

Danny turned to see that the chauffeur was watching him with an eyebrow raised, waiting to close the door to the back of the limo.

Danny slid into the limo. The seats were arranged so that there were four benches set up, and Danny sat across from Vlad as the chauffeur shut the door behind him. Vlad rolled up the divider between the passenger cabin and the driver’s seat before turning to Danny. “Back to our conversation. When you nearly died from the Fenton Ecto-Skeleton, I came in and locked Pariah in his sarcophagus, as well as got my hands on the crown.”

“What do you intend to do with it?” Danny demanded.

Vlad shrugged. “Nothing, actually.”

“What?”

The incredulity in Danny’s voice made Vlad chuckle. “The crown is not exactly a source of power. Oh, it looks fancy, and it seems like it should have power. But it doesn’t, not by itself. It’s a symbol. Whoever wears the crown signifies they are the king of the Ghost Zone.” Vlad narrowed his eyes and folded his hands. “And I’ll admit I do desire the title, but I have no interest in defending said title from the various beings who would do much to prevent me from having it.”

“Like me?” Danny asked, narrowing his eyes.

Vlad scoffed again. “Please, Daniel… There are things much scarier than you.” Danny frowned at that. He knew he wasn't the biggest fish in the pond, but Vlad's casual dismissal still irked him.

He was still trying to find a polite response (he still needed Vlad's help, after all) when Vlad continued. "Daniel, I've heard rumors through the zone. You know who Clockwork is, yes?" Danny reared back. Clockwork has asked him not to talk much about him -- how had Vlad heard about them knowing each other? "Thought so," Vlad said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. "Daniel, what do you think Clockwork is?"

"Uhhh…" Danny began, "a… powerful ghost?" The answer was wrong, he knew that, but he had no clue what the right answer, or at least the answer Vlad was looking for, was.

"He's capable of controlling time, with no limits. He can view every timeline, he can interfere with events that have already occurred."

Vlad leaned back and stated simply. "Daniel, he's a god."

Danny wanted to scoff. That was blowing things out of proportion a bit, wasn't it? "If he's a god, then why does he listen to the Observants?"

Vlad summoned the Crown of Fire again. "For much the same reason that I refuse to let any other being have this…" Vlad leaned over and let Danny look closer. Danny couldn't help it; he wound up leaning forward himself to inspect it. He never got a chance to really look at the Crown of Fire before, and he couldn't help but be slightly mesmerized as the flames lit up the back of the limo.

"You asked me what I intend to do with it," Vlad continued, after giving Danny plenty of time to look, "and the answer is nothing, but there are others out there who'd use its power to try and force ghosts to kneel, to obey them." He clenched his fist and the crown disappeared again. "I refuse to be forced to kneel."

Danny couldn't help but reach towards his core and grasp the energy thrumming there as Vlad growled. Usually that was followed by one of their fights, but Vlad sighed and ran a hand over his head. "The Observants have… something… which gives them sway over Clockwork. I haven't been able to discover it, probably due to the very same powers the Observants have been granted through whatever it is that they are lording over him."

Danny tried to keep the confusion off his face, but as Vlad's eyes raked over him he knew it wasn't hidden, so instead of trying to work through it himself, he just asked, "But… if he's a god, how did…" He trailed off, hot sure how to describe what happened. ‘Defeat him’ didn't seem the right phrase, but…

"How did the Observants gain control?" Vlad finished for him. He folded his hands and crossed his legs. "That, I can't answer. But I don't think that's what you're actually asking." He nodded toward Danny before stroking his beard in thought as he mused,  "When you hear the word ‘god’, you think of a powerful, all-knowing being that is indestructible." He paused to let Danny confirm or deny, but when Danny didn't react, he continued, "That's probably influenced by Christian theology, which posits that one singular being is responsible for everything."

Vlad shrugged. "When it comes to the gods of the ghost zone, it'd be more appropriate to think of the Greek, Roman, or Norse gods: powerful beings, capable of things no mortal man could understand, but still fallible."

Danny opened his mouth to ask a question, cutting Vlad off, and then pausing as he realized he’d done so. After a brief moment, Vlad nodded. "You have a question?"

Danny hadn't expected Vlad to let him ask. That was nice, actually, Mr. Lancer usually just continued on. "If they're so powerful, why would they want the crown?"

Vlad smirked, and Danny suddenly remembered this was his enemy. "I can attest, once you have a taste of power, you want more."

Danny folded his arms. "I'm not like that," he stated defiantly.

Vlad dismissed that with a wave of his hand. "It's easy to say that, but much harder to live up to that expectation." He pointed at Danny. "You once told me that your parents would accept you as a halfa, but not me. Do you still think so?"

"Of course!" The response came out of Danny's mouth immediately. There was no hesitation. No thought was needed. His parents, for all their flaws, loved him and Jazz more than anything, even their research.

"Then why haven't you told them?" Vlad asked, grinning like the cat that caught the canary.

Danny hesitated. Why hadn't he? If he told them, they'd understand. They might even cover for him, and help him learn more about his powers…

Or…

They might say it's dangerous, and that he needs help. They’d get involved in his ghost fighting. They’d start trying to fight with him.

Or worse, insist that he should stop entirely and leave it to them, the adults.

Vlad leaned forward. "It would be better for you to open up to them now, but you won't. You'll risk them capturing you, you'll risk them hurting you, and you'll risk them finding out in the worst possible way, but you won't tell them. Because if you do tell them, they might take it away from you."

Danny leaned back, putting as much distance as he could between him and Vlad. "That's different!"

Vlad nodded, agreeing with him. "Of course it is. We've been talking about gods who desire more power to solidify their already impressive domains, or me, a billionaire who can order a store to open at…" he checked his watch, "eleven o’ clock at night, but all of us have something in common: we all want to keep our little domains ours. " He looked out the window. "And speaking of, we're here."

Danny looked out the window as the car stopped. He didn't recognize the store, or even the area. This was deep in the business district of downtown Amity, an area Danny never needed to go to.

The store didn't have a sign on the front, and when Vlad walked up to the entrance, instead of opening it, he pressed a button near the door. Danny could hear a buzzing from inside the building. He glanced at Vlad, and the man raised an eyebrow.

Danny indicated the door and asked, "There's a doorbell?"

"Ah," Vlad intoned, "there is probably close to a million dollars inside this establishment. It's worth the extra security."

Danny's eyes boggled as the door opened. An older gentleman stood inside. He had bags under his eyes and looked like he had just woken up, and was dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt. "Mr. Masters, welcome, welcome!" He stepped aside to let them in the store. "What can I help you with?"

Vlad walked into the store. "This is Daniel Fenton, the son of some family friends. He's in desperate need of a suit, by tomorrow, in order to impress his date's parents."

The man smiled, the wrinkles by his eyes becoming more pronounced. "Well, for impressive, you've come to the right place." He led the two of them deeper into the store, pausing to grab a measuring tape.

"Alright, Mr Fenton," the man said, indicating for him to stand in the center of three mirrors, "my name is James Tailor and I'll be assisting you." He gave Danny a wink and smiled. “I’m sure we can get you something that’ll knock their socks off.”

Danny stepped up and let James take his measurements. "Your last name is Tailor and you work in a clothing store?"

James shrugged and smiled as he walked around Danny. "I had it legally changed when I got this job."

"Really?"

"No," the man laughed, "but I had you for a moment, didn't I?" His laugh died down into a set of chuckles before he focused on the task at hand. "Alright, Mr. Fenton, just going to get your height here and…" He stopped talking as he stooped to measure Danny’s height in full. "Five foot four, that sound about right?"

Danny felt his throat seize up. He knew that was his height already, but he didn't want to hear it. He had hoped deep down that his height had changed, but of course it hadn't.

It hadn't changed at all since the accident.

"Yes…" Danny, muttered, looking at his reflection, "that sounds about right."

It was because he was looking at the mirror that he saw what happened next. Vlad's eyes widened momentarily before narrowing, and a duplicate of him stepped towards James, who didn't react as it overshadowed him. James's eyes glowed as he took on Vlad's posture, and Vlad stepped forward.

"Daniel… have you not grown since your accident?" Vlad asked, his calm tone of voice completely at odds with the intense expression on both his and James's face. Both of them were inspecting him with narrowed eyes.

Danny looked down at the ground and whispered, "No…" He rubbed his eyes and tried to keep his emotions in check. "It's… it's the reason why I asked Sam out…" He laughed -- thank God, it was better than crying. "I… I'm stuck… Sam isn't much taller than me right now, but… I'm gonna be fourteen… forever and-"

“Daniel," Vlad snapped, making him jump. "Look at me. How old do I look?" He indicated his face.

"Uhh…" Danny began eloquently, "old?" Danny wasn't sure what he was getting at. Vlad was almost a fifty-year-old man, after all.

"Right, old," Vlad repeated, "and when did my accident happen?"

Danny grimaced. He hated talking about his own half-death. It always felt too personal to share with anyone. He really didn’t want to be discussing the details of Vlad’s death with him. That felt like the offering of an olive branch he didn’t want to take. Regardless, he answered, "It was back when you were in college, right?"

Vlad and James nodded. "Exactly. I had the same problem at one point." Vlad explained, walking up to Danny. "We are human, but we are also ghosts. Ghosts are creatures of habit. They do the same thing over and over again expecting a different result." Vlad tilted his head and pointed between the two of them.  "We are different. We should grow and age, but we don't. Not unless we want to…" Vlad froze for a second, and then suddenly Vlad was no longer in front of him. At least, not as Danny knew him.

Danny had only ever known Vlad as a bitter old man who had spent what should have been the best years of his life in a hospital bed.

But in a blink, that Vlad was gone. The wrinkles and grey hair were gone. There was no flash that would precede the transformation from Vlad Masters to Plasmius. Instead, it happened in the blink of an eye. One moment, there was an old man, another, a man in his twenties. The signs of age had been replaced by youth and almost-black hair.

This younger Vlad smirked. The cocky smile was familiar to Danny, but only because of the pictures his dad kept up on their walls.

The Vlad Jack knew in college.

And then he was gone again, that same smirk now on Vlad the wrinkled old billionaire's face. Danny blinked, stunned. "What?"

"Daniel," Vlad began, his tone disappointed but that insufferable smirk wide, "when I told you I had twenty years of experience with these powers, did you really think it had only to do with fighting?"

Danny took a step back. "Uh… well… I…"

Vlad turned and waved his hand about, dismissing Danny's thoughts and scattering them. "There is so much more to our powers than fighting , Daniel, and to be frank, there is probably much you could teach me about that. But no, what I wanted to teach you is so much more than that.”

Vlad indicated James as the overshadowed man pointed at himself. “I can teach you more . How to hear the whispers of people’s emotions, which arcane marks actually work at repelling ghosts, and which ones can summon them and bind them to your will.” He paused and took a deep breath. “And yes, I could teach you how to wipe someone’s mind if you wanted…”

Danny couldn’t help himself. He recoiled at the idea. That… was something he knew he shouldn’t know how to do. While he didn’t completely comprehend what he was capable of doing, he knew what he was willing to do, and sometimes that wasn’t a good thing.

He hadn’t exactly been responsible with all his powers, after all.

He jumped when Vlad put his hand on his shoulder and turned him toward the mirror. “But enough of that,” Vlad said, not quite harshly, but his tone snapped Danny to attention. “If that is something you learn you need, we can discuss it later. For now, let’s focus on the real issue.” He straightened his posture and folded his hands behind his back.

“As I said before,” Vlad continued, his voice mellowing, meeting Danny’s gaze in the mirror. “We are humans. We should grow, we should change, and we should be a great many things. But we are not just humans. Unfortunately or not, we are cursed with our halfa nature, and are also ghosts.”

Danny blinked and turned around, Vlad’s words repeating in his mind. ‘Unfortunately or not’. The phrasing made him think. He didn’t always enjoy being a halfa, but the amount of time he spent being upset about his halfa nature had shortened considerably.

Yet Vlad led with ‘unfortunate’.

“Daniel,” Vlad stated. This time there was a bit of a bite behind his words. Danny jumped before rubbing the back of his head. Vlad sighed and began again: “Daniel.” This time, his words were softer, much like Mr. Lancer in his moments where he cared about Danny and his friends rather than was furious with them.

“Sorry,” Danny said, “can you repeat that?”

“It’s important you understand this.” Vlad shook his head and let out a sigh. “If you had two years to live in the ghost zone to suffer through piecing yourself together, then I would be more than happy to let you try and fumble through this, but as it stands, you have a date tomorrow.”

Danny twisted to look at Vlad, his jaw dropping as he processed what Vlad had said. He wasn't sure if he was more shocked at Vlad saying he had lived two years in the ghost zone, or that Vlad was going to try and teach him something before the morrow.  

Vlad let out a hum before continuing, “Daniel, what do you know about the Platonic Forms?”

“Uh… what?”

Vlad sighed and placed a hand to his forehead. “I hope that your schooling will cover this before you finally graduate.” He sighed and shook his head in exasperation, as James walked up behind them, still overshadowed by Vlad.

James, or rather Vlad in James’s body, took over the conversation. He fixed Danny to the spot with the same glare that usually made Danny hesitate whenever he and Vlad got into a… disagreement. “The Platonic Forms are just ideas of things that actually exist. They are a representation what each individual thing is supposed to be like in order for it to be that specific thing. For example, the form of a human would show qualities of what it means to be a human.”

Vlad raised his hand. “Now, what does that mean? To have the qualities of a human? That’s an interesting question. Does it have two hands and two arms? No. That’s not what makes us human. One could describe a human as a featherless biped, but no, that is not a human. To be a human, is to think, to know. A human isn't a shape, it's a miserable pile of secrets and knowledge.”

“We’re getting off track, though,” James said, giving an annoyed look toward Vlad. He folded his arms and turned toward Danny. “Now, you might be wondering why I’m even bringing this up.”

“That is crossing my mind, yes,” Danny snarked.

Vlad poked Danny in the chest. “Daniel, what is the form of Daniel Fenton? To be a human is to think, but to be a human that is Daniel Fenton, you need what?”

Danny frowned and rubbed his chest where Vlad had poked him. It hadn’t hurt, but he still didn’t like the man touching him. “I still don’t understand what you’re getting at here.”

“In order to be the human Daniel Fenton, do you need to be five feet, four inches?” Vlad asked.

“Or…” James continued, “does he need to be able to turn into Danny Phantom?”

Danny felt something in his chest stir, and he placed his hand over it. The chill from his core bled through his clothes into his palm. He chewed on his lip as he processed that.

“Okay… I understand that,” Danny whispered. “I’m Phantom just like I am Fenton.”

"Quite," Vlad said, some approval bleeding into his voice before his eyes narrowed. "We've established that to be Danny Fenton, one must be Danny Phantom, correct? Now then…" He walked around Danny, and it took a lot of effort for Danny to not spin in place to follow him. "What is a ghost?"

"The spirit of a dead person."

"Exactly!" Vlad clapped. Danny didn't think it was deserving of that level of enthusiasm, but then again, his parents seemed to think that ghosts were simply monsters.

"What does this have to do with the Form… things you were talking about?"

Both Vlad and James sighed and gave each other a what-can-you-do type look as they shrugged in unison. James turned and continued speaking in Vlad's voice. "Perhaps another way of looking at a ghost is that they are the pure existence of a person. No corporal limitations on them. They are free to be what they want to be."

Danny blinked. "Free to be what they want to be…" he mumbled, and turned to look at himself in the mirror. That phrase repeated itself over and over.

He grasped at his core and tilted his perception, nudging his nature over just a little, and flipped the balance between alive and dead.

“Excellent…” Vlad breathed. “Obviously, it is possible do to this sort of thing in our human forms, but it is much easier to do to it in our ghost form.” He held his hand above Danny, just a couple inches. “Now, I’ve seen you stretch your body to dodge attacks before, so you should know how to do that.”

Vlad putting his hands anywhere near Danny was usually enough to set Danny’s teeth on edge, but he tamped that down and followed Vlad’s directions. He stretched his body just slightly until his head made contact with Vlad’s hand. It wasn’t hard. He had done it a million times dodging ecto blasts from the likes of Skulker… or Vlad.

Vlad reached over and tugged on Danny’s hand. “Your arms should be longer.” He poked at Danny’s hip bone. “Same with your legs…”

The next few minutes were remarkably uncomfortable for Danny, as Vlad continued to prod Danny into stretching his ghostly form until it was a good approximation of a sixteen-year-old body. If it took five minutes or it took an hour, Danny wasn’t sure, but eventually, Vlad seemed to find Danny’s proportions to be realistic enough.

“Good, very good.” Vlad said, leaning back and inspecting Danny’s work. “That’ll work quite well. You’ll eventually get the hang of this on your own, but for now-” He paused and pulled on Danny’s wrist again. “Careful, you’re reverting.” He stepped back again. “As I was saying, you’ll eventually learn to get this on your own… assuming you chose to continue aging. There isn’t anything wrong, per se, with wanting to remain young forever, but I’d give it six or so years. College documents are surprisingly easy to forge and are a good excuse for why you are moving.”

He paused one more time and poked Danny’s hip. “You're stretching your chest again. Your legs should be longer, not your chest.” He leaned back and folded his arms. “So, as you’ve understood, hopefully, the ghost form is a Platonic Form. It’s you in a pure sense.” He waved his hand about in the air. “It’s how we see ourselves, it’s the source of our advanced healing and-”

“We have advanced healing?”

Vlad sighed. “Daniel, you didn’t really think you were able to fight the Box Ghost at every odd hour of the night and make it to class with nothing but exhaustion?”

“What do you take me for? You think the Box Ghost can hit me?”

“Fine. Skulker, then…”

There was silence in the fitting room for a moment before Danny rubbed the back of his head. “I hadn’t thought about it.” He chewed on his lip for a moment, before turning toward Vlad. “Why are you doing this?” Vlad froze as Danny continued. “Like, I know you want me to be your apprentice, but why…”

Vlad sighed and looked up at the ceiling as if praying for guidance. Considering that Vlad was saying there were actual gods in the ghost zone, he might have been. “Daniel, think… I want you to be my apprentice, so why wouldn’t I help? If I don’t help when you ask for something, especially if it’s not counter to my own plans, then why would you ever come to me at all? My whole goal here is for you to know that when you need help, I can provide it. That’s what an apprenticeship is .”

Danny frowned. “So you’re saying you’re helping because you want me to come to you for help?” When Vlad nodded in response, Danny scoffed. “If that’s the case, then why would I come to you, if I know that it’s all part of your plan to make me your apprentice?”

Vlad smiled. It wasn’t kind. It reminded Danny too much of Skulker when he had ‘mistakenly’ caught Danny in one of his traps. “Because, Daniel, you know that you’ll get that help. You might know that it’s my plan to make you my apprentice, but you also know that whatever you desire to make happen, I can support your endeavors.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.” Vlad smirked before giving a half-hearted shrug. “Well, unless it goes directly against my interests, but I think you already knew that.” With all the cards laid out on the table, he straightened his back as he stood behind Danny.  “For example, if you need to learn how to transform yourself permanently…” Vlad checked his watch and then looked back up at Danny. “Sometime in the last couple minutes, you stopped thinking about the fact your body was different, and it just became how it was supposed to be.”

Danny looked down at his hands and, yeah, he realized that Vlad had stopped pointing out when he had lost his shape. He also didn’t feel like he was stretching himself out anymore. “That was… quick…”

Vlad nodded. “It’s not a long process to change forms, at least for us. Ghosts do not change. They exist as they always will. It takes a massive outside influence to change a ghost.”

Danny froze in place. That statement brought back some images of what he could do to the ghosts he fought. Or rather, what he would have done if Clockwork hadn’t altered time. The idea that he would cripple Johnny or destroy Ember’s vocal cords kept him up at night sometimes.

Vlad was implying that such a thing was difficult. Ember had said that he had done it with the ghostly wail. It had taken his alternate self years to reach the point he could use that power.

Danny already could. If he got too careless… or too angry…

He shook his head, trying to banish images of the future of several ghosts he knew.  “But…” he said, thinking of one in particular, “I’ve seen Technus change forms.”

“True,” Vlad said, “but, did he really change? Or was it his expression of himself? He’s still an old man with delusions of being tech and hip… he just has a different idea of what’s hip, thanks in part to your efforts.”

Danny sighed and rubbed the back of his head. “I don’t get it.”

Vlad let out a noncommittal noise showing that he had heard Danny, but didn’t respond beyond that immediately. Instead, he took some time and thought before saying, “Well… For example: Ember, at her core, sees herself as a forgotten rockstar. Her occasional pirate episodes don’t really change that at all. But you…” Vlad tilted his head and indicated all of Danny with a gesture. “You’ve seen yourself as a fourteen-year-old. You didn’t think you changed because it was so gradual -- until you felt trapped in your own body.”

Vlad turned to James. “Speaking of, perhaps we should get back to your fitting?”

Danny transformed back and looked down at his clothes. His clothes were always a little baggy, but now they were just on the wrong side of too small. He shifted uncomfortably as Vlad’s duplicate walked out of James’s body.

James put a hand to his head and let out a shuddering breath. “Whoa, uh… sorry, I think I spaced out there. Where were we?”

“You did,” Vlad said clearly, “and you need to measure Daniel here.”

“Right. Five feet, four inches, correct?” James said, readying the tape measure.

“Remeasure.” The order came from Vlad, and James didn’t argue.

“Hmmm… Five feet, six inches. Impressive.”

Danny glanced between James and Vlad. “Uhh…”

James raised an eyebrow as he measured Danny’s neck. He noted the measurement and then shook his head. “I don’t know what just happened, exactly, but I’m paid to not care.”

“Don’t you mean, you’re not paid to care?” Danny asked as James remeasured his arms.

“No, I mean every time Vlad calls and asks for a new suit, I am paid to not ask questions,” James smirked and threw the measuring tape over a chair. “Spacing out for a while and losing an hour of time might be worrisome for most people, but I’m making 50k tonight.”

Danny gaped as James addressed Vlad. “I can’t help but notice, though, that his clothes don’t quite fit. New wardrobe as well?”

“Of course,” Vlad said, nodding. “Just throw that on the rest of the bill.”

“Understood,” James said, leading Danny over to the suit jackets. “Now then, any preferences for colors?”

“Uh… black?” Danny offered.

“Alright then, black it is.” ***

The “gala” that Sam invited Danny was… posh… if nothing else. She had told him that the whole event was just a waste of time and intended for the Mansons to show off to the rest of the elite, so he shouldn’t have been surprised.

Which was why it was not held in Amity Park. No risk of ghost attacks if it was held in Wisconsin.

If only they knew.

Danny couldn’t help it. He felt like he stuck out like a sore thumb. He was a sixteen-year-old boy  wearing a suit that was worth more than the family car, weaponry included, standing in this dance hall with hundreds of people more than twice his age, wearing clothes that were…

Actually, there was a good chance that Danny’s suit was more expensive than their outfits. He’d seen the bill Vlad had paid for.

Danny saw Sam walking away from her parents. She had that frown on her face that was always accompanied by a rant about wasted resources and a disregard for the environment. He started walking towards her and called out before she could disappear into the crowd. “Sam!”

Sam whirled around, ready to tear into someone, but then her eyes widened. “Danny! I… uh…” She trailed off as she looked him up and down. “I… didn’t recognize you at first.”

“I don’t blame you,” Danny said, plucking at his suit. “I don’t get why Vlad wears these things. They’re awful to move in.”

“That’s…. not it at all,” Sam said, looking up at Danny. That was something she’d never had to do before.

“Oh.” The simple vocalization cut across the two of them with so much disdain that Danny thought Vlad had seen Jack at the gala. Danny turned and saw Sam’s parents walking over. ‘You’re the Fentons’ boy, aren’t you? Sammykins insisted that you be extended an invitation,” her mother said, glancing between the two of them. “It… has been a while since we’ve seen you. You’ve grown a bit in the last year, haven’t you?”

“I’ll say,” Sam muttered under her breath, and gave Danny a look that meant she demanded an explanation soon.

“Ah, yeah, I guess it has been a while.” Danny rubbed the back of his head and glanced at Sam for support, but he knew that was useless; Sam didn’t want to get along with her parents, so she didn’t care if Danny did. Actually, scratch that, she would be upset if Danny did get along with her parents.

Still, didn’t make the small talk any less awkward.

“Ah! There you are!” Danny never thought he’d be happy to hear Vlad’s voice, but the last twenty-four hours contained a lot of surprises. He walked up to Danny holding a champagne glass. “I must say, Daniel, you look like a million bucks!” He chuckled and tilted the glass toward Danny. “Well, perhaps a bit less. That suit isn’t quite that much.”

“Uhhh… what?” Sam said, glancing between Danny and Vlad.

“All things considered,” Danny muttered, “if you round up….”

“Mr. Masters,” Sam’s father began, “I wasn’t aware you knew Daniel Fenton here…”

“Oh, his family and I go way back. I met his parents in college!” Vlad chuckled and sipped from his glass. “I’ve actually been hoping to convince Daniel here to join me on some of my ventures.” He shrugged. “I’m sure you know how it is. So many projects, so little time. Would love to have someone I could consider an apprentice taking some of them off my hands.”

“Yeah…” was the nervous response made by Sam’s father. “I, uh… I understand completely.”

Danny knew better than to assume that Vlad was fooled for a second.

Vlad didn't seem off-put at all, and instead reached over and took Sam’s father by the shoulder. “Come, come, let’s talk. I’m sure there’s so much we could discuss.” He glanced back at Danny and gave him a smirk before walking off with Sam’s parents.

Sam turned to Danny. “Okay, what the hell?”

Danny sighed. “Look, it took a lot for me to get this suit… I don't even know where to start…”

"Usually one starts at the beginning," Sam growled through gritted teeth.

"Well, it all started when I was just fourteen and-"

"Not that far back, you dork!"

[haloburns]

Oh i NEED to know more about the Floral Collab fic bruh

aha this is something we started out throwing back and forth like last september?? there was a plot, i think, but it was mostly high school shenanigans. it was before i settled in the ghost light au, so it's just a normal fic. i wrote out some forced reveal stuff for some reason, but i literally have no idea where i was going with it. i keep considering finishing it and posting it anyway

here's the little bit that i wrote!

Like everything else in his life, it had started with an accident.One would think that after saving the planet, there would’ve been a grace period. A time where ghosts stayed in the Zone and let Danny simply exist for a few beautiful, quiet, peaceful moments. Not in Danny’s life! No sir, nothing is ever that easy for him. Which is how he ended up convulsing in agony on the floor in first period English.The day had started like normal. Danny woke up, grabbed a Pop-Tart on the way out the door and flew off to school, expertly avoiding his parents. Things hadn’t been easy, per se, since Jazz had left for college, so Danny did what he was good at: he avoided the problem until it would come back around and bite him in the ass. Once he arrived at school, he met up with Tucker and Sam at their normal meet-up tree, and they walked into the building together. Dash slammed him into a locker with some vague threat Danny tuned out, Kwan slapped his books out of his hand, and Star insulted his outfit. All in all, a normal Tuesday. The first hint that something was wrong should’ve been the ungodly sneeze. His face, hidden in his locker, stared open mouthed at the neon green ooze now covering his locker. He had never sneezed out ectoplasm since his accident. Not even slightly neon normal snot! His nose continued to itch, and Sam made an offhand comment about allergies, since it was the first warm week of the new year. Danny felt it was necessary to point out that he didn’t have allergies, before or after his half-death. It would be weird to develop them now. His friends just shrugged, out of suggestions for the weird sneeze. He sighed and Tucker helped him clean up the ectoplasm coating his locker with the Fenton Thermos. They set out for first period together, Tucker and Sam starting up an old argument from yesterday. The second hint that something was wrong should’ve been the sound of Paulina bragging. It never boded well for anyone.

“Aren’t these just gorgeous?” she asked her gaggle of friends, obviously fishing for compliments. “They’re flowers for Phantom, fresh from this flower stall I passed this morning!” See, Sam pointed out with one perfectly arched eyebrow at Danny. It must be those flowers, she said with only a look. (Danny later cursed Clockwork, the Ancients, and a few extra deities that Sam was right as often as she was.) For the first time in a long time, Danny showed up to first period on time. Early, even. If Lancer’s raised eyebrows were any indicator, he was also shocked. Danny slumped into his desk near the front of the room, letting Sam and Tucker’s arguing wash over him. He was rather enjoying the relative peace and quiet of his morning. But, of course, it couldn’t last because the universe had it out for Danny, he was sure.Right as the final bell rang, Paulina swept into the room in a more-dramatic-than-usual fashion. Initially, he didn’t see what was going on because he was staring at the ceiling tiles trying to figure out what he was going to do after school if everything remained quiet. Another sneeze crawled up his nose and panic quickly followed it because he couldn’t hide an ectoplasm sneeze in the open classroom. He dove for his backpack, hoping to at least contain it somewhat, when his eyes caught on the large bouquet in Paulina’s hands. What little color he had left in his face drained out. “These are so lovely,” she giggled as she swept over to her seat. “I can’t wait to give them to Phantom!” Sam was the first one to speak, her shock wearing off faster than her friends’.

“Are you trying to kill him?” “What do you mean?” she sneered as she turned around quickly. Danny gagged as the bouquet swept in his direction, causing pollen to fall off of them and blow in his direction. But, due to his shitty luck, Paulina had essentially trapped him. She stood to his left, flowers aimed at him, blocking the only normal way out of his seat so she could glare at Sam, one hand on her hip. “Those are blood blossoms, Paulina,” Sam said with a roll of her eyes. “They’re toxic to ghosts.” “How do you know that, freak?” “Class, it’s time to get started,” Lancer called from the front of the room. “Sam,” Danny warned in a tight voice. The longer he spent next to the blood blossoms, the more likely something bad was going to happen. “What’s wrong with you, Fenturd?” Dash asked as he gave him a disgusted look. “Allergies!” Tucker piped up. “Yeah, Danny’s super allergic to pollen.” “Of a ghost toxic plant?” Star asked, scoffing. “...Yeah, because of his ectocontamination,” Tucker supplied quickly. Everyone knew that Danny had a weird amount of ectoplasm in his system somehow, because of how crazy his parents were, and so that helped explain away most of his weird shit.That wasn’t going to work today. “Guys!” he gasped, gripping the edge of his desk so hard, his knuckles were as white as his gloves. “Paulina, MOVE!” Sam said, panic rising in her voice as she looked over at her best friend. She slipped in between the desks and shoved Paulina out of the way. Danny collapsed to the floor as he tried to scramble away, now that there was an opening. He was gasping for air and trying not to gag on every inhale. Paulina shrieked at Sam touching her, flailing like it was anything more than just a light shove. The class couldn’t decide where they wanted to look: the cat fight brewing between Sam and Paulina, a long time coming, or the weird Fenton kid that was having some kind of freakout on the floor. Three things happened all at once: 1) One of the flowers came loose from the bouquet and fell towards Danny. 2) Mr Lancer cried, “Flowers for Algernon, people, what is going on?!” 3) Danny watched his half-life flash before his eyes--no, wait. That was really a flash--the end

i mean i guess i could technically just post it like that... 🤔 hm. now i'm thinking about actually posting it on ao3

[a-hobit]

Y’all I used to watch Danny Phantom over and over for years I loved that shit so much and so I thought “oh a trip through my nostalgia! Blorbo!”

Not as deep as I remember it being and I think my opinion on Bitch Hartman actually kind of sours a lot of my enjoyment sometimes (sexist and homophobic jokes my detested) but otherwise if anyone was thinking about rewatching it I recommend it! It’s pretty fun for most of the time and while I didn’t love a few episodes (*COUGH COUGH* IDENTITY CRISIS *COUGH COUGH*) flanderization is really apparent in DP (Skulker, Vlad, Jazz, Sam, Danny andTucker all kind of suck in their own special ways toward the end of the series) and the way that you can pick on the writing errors pretty easy is annoying it doesn’t detract from how good it is!

Other news when Danny is not out of character and horrendously down bad he is so cute I might die. Also Sam? Not as bad as I remembered her for being towards other women! She’s typically supportive but slightly judgmental rather than outright being a killjoy. It mostly frustrates me that the writing for the other women who aren’t main characters is so shallow that it makes Sam seem like the only sane one in a room often. Buuuut to be perfectly honest idk a woman born around 1995-2005 that didn’t have a not like the other girls phase sooo

But god damn does this show make me laugh! It’s so well done — so here’s a list of some of the jokes that made me actually laugh out loud!

(In no particular order)

“Dude. You are one jacked up crazy frootloop. That will never happen.”

“But back in our college days she was just Harry — Harry CHIN!? GET IT??!”

“Agh who cares about who you were in your college days? It’s who you grow into that counts. If you can be that crazy back then and turn into a super cool ghost hunter…maybe there’s hope for me yet.

Aww thanks son…but your curfew is still ten.

Awww man!” 

“Does anyone want a cookie?

*shakes head no*

THEN PERISH!!!!!”

“The reason why Danny feels like you don’t relate to him is because you never talk to him about when you were younger!

Jazz—

When you went to college— had your first date —

Jazz—!”

“I know your little secret Danny.

YoU dO?!

The lying — the sweatiness — you have a girlfrie—!

ITS A LIE IM NOT A GHOST!!!”

“*in Walkers jail looking at past enemies*

Wow a table full of people who hate me…Just like high-school.”

“I’m perfectly happy Maddie—JACK FENTON DONT YOU DARE WIZZ ON MY RUBARB! Perfectly happy…”

“A party?? For me? ‘A decade of devoice’! You all remembered!!

Of course! And we even convinced your ex husband to come!”

“*Danny staring at Sam all lovesick*

Uhhh can you watch something other than me??

*pauses*

*pulls out a picture of Sam*

*continues staring lovesick*”

“*in a gaming lab with Tucker and Danny — Sam walks in*

What are you doing here? (To Danny) She can’t be here to play…

Oh because I’m a girl? And us girls are lacking in what? Opposable thumbs? One track minds? Stupid berets?

Hey!”

“*Danny Sam and Tucker walking though school (Danny with his shirt covering his mouth)*

Is anybody looking at me funny?!

Yeah…but that’s because you look like you’re trying to eat your way through your shirt.”

“Spooky hospital…ghosts guarding the joint…still no sign that Danny is in any real danger yet!

(Danny from inside the hospital about to be dissected)

Let me go!

Still…technically not a cry for help!

HELP!!

Well—not a cry for me!

TUCKER???!!?”

“*Danny Sam and Tucker are talking in the highschool about Danny pranking Dash*

He’s going to find out it’s you.

(Danny and Tucker) Have you seen his grades? Never gonna happen!

(Dash) Hey! This iS FENTON WIPE!

(Sam) ‘Never’ is karma’s doorbell! Ding dong it’s for you!”

“I’m Sam Manson and my happy princess talent is…(glances over at Dora who looks threatening)…

Goth haiku.

DESPAIR WITHOUT END Dora’s a ghost!

UTTER BLACKNESS — NOTHINGNESS! Dora’s a ghost!!

DORA. IS. A. GHOST!!!

(Pushed off stage)”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to take it upon myself to keep Danny safe and calm until you complete the task.

Me stay with you?! Forget it!

*manifests a little thunderstorm that electrocutes Vlad*

WILL YOU QUIT DOING THAT?!?

Look on the bright side Danny! Until we get back he’s going to have to cater to your every whim and desire…

Yeah! He wouldn’t want to make you angry…

(Vlad stares at them blankly)

(Danny smiles) This pleases me!”

“*Danny is manifesting himself in Tucker’s dream and is watching Tucker live out a fantasy where he’s a billionaire spending time with two girls who look like star*

(Tucker to janitor) That will be all Fenton.

(Dream Danny) Yes sir.

(Real Danny) Wait…I’m the janitor?!?

*later*

By the way Tucker? I don’t do windows”

“*Danny is being impersonated by Morpho and is chasing ‘Danny Fenton’ though the house as the alarms blare”

The ghost defenses! That means—!

*Fentons bust in guns blazing*

Bingo Maddie!! Putrid protoplasm straight ahead!!

And he’s after our boy!

(Morpho as DF) Ah—? Oh that’s right I’m your boy—Billy!!

Danny?!”

“*after being on a cooking show with Pamela Manson*

(Maddie to Sam) I can’t believe your mother said I had bad meal presentation— so I didn’t use a parsley sprig is that a crime?!!?”

Hope you all enjoy! I’m rewatching Gravity Falls next!

[lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks]

Grabbing Smoke

As much time as Sam spent with her best friends, sometimes she enjoyed a little bit of time alone.

Tucker was helping his mother bake cookies for some kind of fundraiser for the hospital, and Danny was busy visiting Pandora for fighting lessons. Apparently they were using swords today.

As fun as it sounded, Sam opted to stay behind, it had been a while since she'd been down to the park to feed the ducks. She didn't get quiet moments like that very often any more.

There was an uncharacteristic skip to her gait as she walked to the park, a canvas tote bag swinging from her arm.

Living in Amity Park, and especially hanging around with Danny, gave her an eerie sense to when something was amiss. Nothing quite like Danny's ghost sense, but she'd learned to detect a particular chill to the air, a prickling at the back of her neck. It could easily be mistaken for a chilly breeze, but Sam knew better. The crunch of gravel under Sam's boots was the only sound permeating the still air, not even the trees were rustling.

She continued her walk through the park, past the wishing fountain and through a trail where the trees grew slightly more dense.

The trail opened up to a large pond, it wasn't anything especially picturesque, the reeds were a little overgrown, the ground was muddy, but there were a few simple weather worn benches by the path that looped around the water.

Sam took a seat, pulling out a bag of frozen peas. She opened it, tipped a few into her hand and tossed them into the water.

The ducks immediately sped across the pond toward her, fighting for the peas that the turtles hadn't already gotten to.

Instead of grabbing another handful, she held the bag out to the empty seat to her left, waiting for a moment before shaking the bag impatiently.

A green hand slipped into the bag, pulling out a handful of peas before tossing them into the water.

"How'd you know I was here?" Kitty asked, now sitting visibly on the other end of the bench as Sam poured out more peas for both of them.

"I have my ways." Sam smirked. "What I want to know is why you've been following me all week."

"You knew for that long and you didn't say nothin'?" Kitty huffed. "Damn, I gotta up my game."

A duck waddled up and nibbled on her boot.

"Alright alright, ya hungry little doofus." Kitty lowered a hand full of peas and cooed as the duck happily ate from her palm. "Aww these guys aren't shy at all, do you come here a lot?"

"When I can." Sam tossed a few more peas into the water for the turtles. "So why are you following me?"

Kitty sat back and pressed her lips together, thinking.

"Look it's just... I don't remember much from when I was livin', you know? It's all sorta grey and fuzzy, I can't remember what anyone looked like, except Johnny." she tossed some peas to a smaller duck at the back of the group. "But as soon as I showed up here in town and I saw your face, I thought I felt... I dunno, somethin'. Like I'd seen you before, or maybe you just reminded me of someone, but I can't remember who, it's like grabbing smoke."

She lobbed a few peas a little harder than was necessary at the water. The turtles sucked them up greedily.

"So you've just been following me hoping you might remember something else?" Sam asked.

"Yeah," Kitty sighed. "But it's not working."

Sam swung her foot idly between a pair of scuffling ducks, splitting them up before tossing out some more peas.

"Maybe I'm related to someone you knew. Where did you grow up?"

Kitty frowned down at the water.

"I... I don't know." she said, deflating somewhat. "I didn't even realise I forgot that."

Sam couldn't help but feel for her, Danny had told her that ghosts would often forget things from their past, especially once they'd been dead for longer than they'd been alive. Somehow she had never really considered how terrifying that must be.

"You know..." Sam started carefully. "I could show you some old family photos. Maybe you'll recognise someone?"

Kitty looked up, eyes shining brightly.

"Really? You'd do that for me?"

"Why not?" Sam shrugged. "If you were here to cause trouble you would have done it by now."

"Aw, I never thought you'd wanna do something like that for me." said Kitty, smiling brightly. "You always seemed like such a bitch."

Sam laughed.

"If you'd spent a week being someone that wasn't Paulina, I would probably have seemed like less of a bitch."

"So you guys are big rivals or somethin'?" Kitty asked, grabbing some more peas and giggling as three ducks tried to eat from her hand at once.

"It's more that we have... conflicting ideologies. She thinks that appearances and reputation are the most important things in life, just like my parents." Sam lobbed some more peas into the water, they both watched them disappear as the turtles quickly snapped them up. "It's shallow and stupid, and I don't get why they have to push that shit on everyone. I don't care what people think, I just want to be whoever the hell I wanna be without having to fight for it all the time."

Kitty's face turned contemplative as she tapped her nails on the back of the bench.

"I think... I was like that." she said, slowly. "I wanted to feel fun and exciting, but my parents..."

She trailed off, frowning.

"My parents... I didn't like them. They didn't like me bein' the way I was, I can't really remember why."

Sam emptied out the last of the peas and scattered them over the ground, she scrunched up the empty packet and shoved it back into her tote bag.

"You know, if we went to school together we would probably have gotten along." said Sam as she stood up, gesturing toward the path. "Let's go check out those photos."

Instead of floating invisibly behind, Kitty walked by Sam's side as they headed back to her house. She idly waved at people as they drove past, grinning when someone stared a little too long and almost ran a red light.

"You know, it's nice bein' able to walk around in the day." Kitty said, skipping a little. "Wish I could do it more often."

"What's stopping you?"

"What do you think?" Kitty's lip pulled up in disgust. "Any time I show up your dumb friend sucks me up in his stupid thermos. Only reason I can walk around right now is because I got you as my get out of jail free card."

"Danny doesn't care if you just want to walk around." Sam scoffed. "He lets ghosts wander around town all the time, he only gets involved when you start breaking things."

"Uggghhh but just walking around is so boring." Kitty pouted. "I mean yeah it's nice and I like it but it gets old real quick."

"Then you'll have to get used to getting tossed back in the ghost zone. Do not pass go, do not collect $200."

"Don't you ever get sick of his goody goody attitude?" Kitty asked. "I mean you and I aren't so different right? You're all about the rebel gig, don't you ever feel like keyin' some asshole's car, or takin' a baseball bat to some mail boxes?"

"Only if they deserve it." said Sam with a smirk. "But I feel like you aren't especially picky about whose stuff you're breaking."

They approached the door to the Manson mansion, Sam hopped up the steps and stuck the key in the lock. She touched the mezuzah on the doorpost without a second thought before opening the door and standing aside to invite Kitty in.

The ghost stared up at her warily.

"I can't get past it."

"Past what?" Sam asked.

"The mezuzah, it keeps me out."

"What?" Sam frowned. "It hasn't stopped other ghosts from getting in."

"Well it stops me." Kitty insisted. "I think it's got somethin' to do with what we believed in when we were alive. I haven't got a problem with churches but when Johnny tried to ride his bike through one he couldn't get in. His mom raised him Catholic, he says he doesn't believe in any of that stuff, but I think he still does, deep down."

"So does that mean you were Jewish?" Sam asked, smiling curiously.

"I AM Jewish." Kitty crossed her arms. "Bein' a ghost hasn't changed that, it just... means that we got a few things a little wrong."

Sam thought about that for a moment, before stepping aside and gesturing toward the door again.

"Well, if you've been invited and you're not going to cause any trouble, then I don't see why you shouldn't be able to come in."

Kitty climbed the steps slowly, fingers reaching out and cautiously brushing over the mezuzah, she didn't feel anything unusual, no zap or burn or pain. She took a step through the doorway and passed the threshold without issue, no invisible force or barrier like the last time she tried to follow Sam inside.

"Well, what do you know." she said, grinning.

Sam lead her into a large, open planned kitchen and dining area, the tiles were bright white save for the specks of mud Sam's boots tracked through the room. The decor was minimalist, the atmosphere bland and sterile, she could smell some kind of citrus surface cleaner.

The back wall was all windows, leading to a patio surrounded by perfectly trimmed grass. As they approached, Sam turned, heading towards a door to their right.

The next room felt a lot more friendly, it was full of bookshelves and red tones. The lounges looked soft and inviting, a fireplace sat cold and empty against the back wall, but Kitty didn't have to try hard to imagine it roaring to life, filling the room with its warm glow.

"This is basically my Grandma's part of the house." Sam informed her, voice low. "Her bedroom is just through there, she's usually napping around this time of day so try not to make too much noise."

Kitty slipped off her jacket and laid it over the back of the lounge, already feeling at home in the cosy little room. She looked over the books as Sam fussed around some kind of large ornate chest.

"Here it is." She hefted a large photo album from the chest, carefully closing and latching it again. "Let's see if you recognise anyone in here."

Kitty sat down beside Sam as she opened up the pristine book, the outer cover was beige with the name Manson inscribed in golden cursive on the front. The first page was full of old faded photos, in greyscale or sepia tones.

"Ugh, I'm not that old." said Kitty, flicking ahead a few pages.

The pictures were colourful now, but still grainy, there was a young blonde boy in seventies style jeans leaning casually against a Chevrolet.

"Wait hold up," Kitty pointed at the boy. "Him, I feel like I've seen him before."

"That's my dad." said Sam, surprised. "His name is Jeremy, did you know him?"

Kitty hummed a little, gently tracing a finger over the picture.

"Jeremy... Jeremy, I'm not sure," she frowned. "But he definitely looks familiar."

They continued through the book, when suddenly Kitty slapped her hand down roughly on a photo of a pair of young women.

"Her! I know her! She was a mega bitch!"

"Shhh keep it down." Sam hissed.

"Sorry," Kitty pointed to the blonde girl in the photo. "That one! I don't know how I knew her, but I definitely knew her. She was a total brat."

Sam slipped the photo out of its sleeve and read the neat cursive on the back.

"This is... my Aunt Caroline, in 1985. She's my dad's sister." Sam looked up at Kitty, amused. "I can't believe you had beef with my family."

"Your family are snobs." Kitty sniffed. "Carrie was such a ditz, she thought she was sooo bitchin' because her daddy bought her a Mercedes."

"Yeah, that sounds about right." Sam grimaced. "Did you guys go to school together or something?"

"Maybe..." Kitty took the photo from Sam's hand, staring intently. "I'm pretty sure I skipped school a lot, I hated it there. It was a private school, we had to wear uniforms, barf."

"I would never have guessed you were a private school kid." Sam shook her head. "But most people would say that about me so it's not like I can judge."

"You went to private school?" Kitty asked, "How'd you end up in that Casper High dump?"

"Got myself expelled." said Sam, voice thick with pride. "Elementary, middle and high school, got kicked out of all three."

"Damn, you're good."

Sam grinned, slipping the photo back in its sleeve and continuing to the next page.

Kitty pointed to a few other photos, remarking on their familiarity, but not quite able to grasp how she knew them, the memories only flickered in her periphery.

"Wait," Kitty whispered, fingers brushing over a polaroid containing three people. "This is..."

The picture looked as though it were taken at some kind of party, a man and a woman faced the camera, each with a glass of champagne raised in their hands. The woman's other hand rested on the shoulder of a teenage girl with auburn hair, pulled into a tidy braid. She stared glumly at the camera.

"That's Katherine." Sam said, pointing to the girl. "She was my dad's cousin, but she got hit by a car when she was-"

Sam paused, looking over at Kitty's wide eyes and then back to the photo.

"Noooo way." Sam pulled the photo out of the sleeve. "Is this you?"

Kitty took the photo in trembling hands.

"I... I forgot I used to look like that." she fiddled with a lock of her green, teased hair. "I remember this party, I didn't want to go but mom and dad threatened to take away all my records and cassettes if I didn't."

Sam stared at Kitty, mouth agape.

"You're Car Crash Katherine?! My dad talks about you all the time! He always told me about the shit you used to get up to, he'd tell me that any kind of 'rebellious behaviour' was a slippery slope to 'dying on the back of some delinquent's motorcycle'." Sam put a hand on Kitty's shoulder. "You were my bad influence role model."

Kitty's red eyes shone with tears, photo still in hand, she wrapped her arms around Sam.

"This is majorly wicked! My legacy lives on! Corrupting the youth from beyond the grave!" Kitty laughed. "My parents would go totally mental."

She stopped laughing, her face turning forlorn as she drew back from Sam and stared down at the picture.

"Are they still alive?" she asked, a tremble in her voice.

"Yeah..." said Sam. "They live in a retirement home in Florida. They don't come around very often."

Kitty traced a finger over their faces.

"I wonder if they miss me." she said quietly. "Or if they were glad to be rid of the family embarrassment."

Sam didn't answer, she had wondered the same thing herself, if her parents would even care if she died. They hadn't given her a lot of reason to think they would.

She rested a sympathetic hand on Kitty's arm.

"Oh, you have a friend over bubbeleh?" a croaky voice spoke from the bedroom doorway.

Sam and Kitty both turned to see Ida Manson shuffling into the room, cleaning her glasses with her sleeve.

"Sorry Grandma, we didn't mean to be too loud." Sam apologised. "This is my... um, friend, Kitty. Kitty this is my Grandma Ida-"

"Ida?!" Kitty shot to her feet, staring in shock at the old woman. "Aunt Ida?!"

Ida squinted at Kitty, before quickly setting her glasses back on her face.

"Well as I live and breath, is that you Kathy?"

"Oh my god this is getting super weird." Sam whispered.

Kitty leapt over the ottoman to wrap Ida up in a tight hug, the old woman was surprised for a moment, but held her warmly in return.

"It's me Aunt Ida! Not really living or breathing but it's me!" Kitty laughed breathlessly.

"Oh my goodness, when all the ghosts started showing up all over town I wondered if I would ever see someone I knew." She rubbed comforting circles on Kitty's back as the ghost choked on a few sobs. "It's good to see you again Kathy."

Ida pulled away and wiped a tear from Kitty's face.

"And I'm so glad you aren't stuck wearing what your parents buried you in."

Kitty couldn't help but laugh through her tears.

"Let me guess, it was that putrid blue dress, wasn't it?"

"The dress wasn't nearly as bad as what they did to your hair." Ida snickered, patting Kitty's hand. "It had little ribbons in it and everything."

"I almost forgot you." Kitty placed her palm gently against Ida's face. "You were the only one in the family who ever loved me for being me, and I almost forgot you. I'm so sorry, I should have come to find you sooner but I just-"

"Shhhh, it's okay bubbeleh." Ida grasped her hand tight. "I think being dead is a pretty good excuse for forgetting a few things."

Sam stood beside the lounge, watching the two in shock, she wasn't entirely certain whether or not to intrude. Whatever she had been expecting to discover with Kitty today, it certainly hadn't been this.

Though in hindsight, it did explain Kitty's familiarity with Sam, people always said she had taken after her Grandma.

Ida let go of Kitty and hobbled over to the photo album still sitting on the lounge.

"Oh you don't want to look at that album." she said, as she shoved it onto the coffee table. She wandered to the other side of the room and began rummaging around in a small cupboard. "You want this one."

She pulled out a book with well worn, peeling edges. Pieces of the plastic sleeves had cracked off and crumbled away. It was old, and weatherbeaten, it was obvious that Ida had looked through it many many times.

"Here we go." she sat down in the middle of the lounge, gesturing for the two girls to come sit beside her. "These are the forbidden photos."

She opened the pages, the photos inside were entirely different from the 'official' album, there were no perfectly poised, prim and proper photos of people in nice, presentable clothes. They were all candid shots, people in the middle of eating or laughing, some were stumbling around blind drunk, a few were smoking joints. There were pictures from parties and protest rallies, in backyards and drive ins.

There was a picture of Jeremy as a young boy, grinning with one of his front teeth missing and grass in his hair.

"Only in this family would losing your baby teeth make a photo 'unsavoury'." Ida grizzled as she continued through the album. "I saved so many pictures that my husband would have thrown out otherwise."

"Ugh, Uncle Peter was such a prude, he wouldn't even let me in the house if I didn't have my shoulders covered up." Kitty rolled her eyes.

"He used to be so much more relaxed when we were young." Ida sighed. "He changed when he inherited his father's business, he forgot how to have fun."

A few pages later Kitty squealed in excitement.

"Oh my god! That's Frankie! She was my best friend, we used to do everything together!"

The Kitty in the photo looked far more like the Kitty Sam knew. Her hair was teased up, and she was wearing a crop top and a miniskirt. The other girl, Frankie, had short curled hair and a leather jacket. They each had an arm around the others' shoulder and grinned wildly.

"I love this one." Ida smiled as she pulled the picture out of the sleeve. "That was the night I gave you a lift to that concert."

"Oh that show was sooo good! I got my nose pierced there! It got so infected, Mom grounded me for a month." Kitty laughed.

"Man, and I thought I was cool for skipping school to go see Circus Gothica." Sam grinned. "I'm gonna have to come home with a tattoo next time."

"I can't believe I forgot about Frankie, I can't believe I forgot about all of this." Kitty held the photo close to her chest, a few tears running down her face. "I'm so glad it's not gone for good."

She kept the photo in hand as they looked through the rest of the album. There were many pictures of Ida, all of them with other people of all walks of life.

"Oh this was when you took us to that pride parade!" Kitty smiled. "You made Frankie so happy, and you knew a lot of the drag queens there, like a LOT."

"Grandma took me to a drag show when I was 10," said Sam. "Even took me backstage to meet them all, my parents thought we went to the theatre to see Romeo and Juliet."

"Oh I have photos from that." Ida flipped through the pages, getting closer to the end of the album. "Here we are, oh Evelyn just LOVED you."

Sam looked at the picture of Evelyn, frowning slightly.

"Oh weird, she kinda looks like Mr Lancer's sister, he keeps her photo on his desk..." Sam paused as she processed what she just said. "That's not his sister is it?"

"You probably shouldn't bring it up." said Ida gently. "Teachers can get in trouble for associating with this sort of thing."

"That's so bogus!" Kitty cried. "I really thought this kinda stuff would be better in the future!"

"It is," Ida assured her. "But we're a long way from perfect."

Ida flipped back through the album, searching for more pictures of Kitty and Frankie. There were a good few of them, each one Ida pulled out and passed over for Kitty to look at and hold onto.

"Oh woah, is that Johnny?" Sam pointed to a picture of Kitty sitting on the back of a motorcycle with a blonde boy. "He looks exactly the same, just a little less pale."

"Oh, did Johnny come back as a ghost too?" Ida asked.

"Yeah! We've been together all this time, in sickness and in death." Kitty beamed. "Mom and dad blamed him for everything I did, even if he wasn't around when I did it. They said him and Frankie were 'corrupting' me."

She rolled her eyes.

"I bet they blamed him for my death too. They'd be so mad if they knew we were still together."

"Just goes to show they had no chance of keeping you two apart." Ida said. "Not even death could do that."

Kitty held the photo tight in both hands, her shoulders began to shake slightly.

"It was my fault you know." she said with a trembling little giggle. "Funny huh? My parents always blamed him for everything, but in the end it was my fault we got hit. We were havin' a fight over somethin' stupid and I distracted him-"

Ida wrapped an arm around Kitty, patting her head comfortingly as she laid it against the old woman's shoulder.

"I think you're being too hard on yourself bubbeleh." Ida whispered gently into her hair. "It was raining, the truck that hit you was running a red light, the driver was charged for both your deaths. Even if you did distract him, you weren't the only card at play that night."

She gave Kitty a light shake.

"And don't think I didn't see the way Johnny used to drive that thing, he was reckless. I have no doubt that he wasn't paying as much attention as he should have been." She placed a kiss on the girl's forehead and squeezed her tight. "It's not fair to hold all of that responsibility on yourself, even if you both did everything right, that truck still would have run that red light, it still would have been raining. It was just pure rotten luck."

Sam had never heard a ghost talk about their death before, even Danny didn't like talking about his accident, and asking about it was incredibly taboo. Sam had been pushing her luck earlier just by mentioning the car crash.

It said a lot about Kitty's love for Ida that she chose to open up about it. Sam couldn't say she was surprised, her Grandma had always been like that. Never anything but an endless well of love and support, and the occasional kick in the pants if you needed it.

"Johnny's always had rotten luck." Kitty sniffed. "Follows him like a shadow."

"Literally." Sam snorted.

After a few more moments, Ida pulled herself away from Kitty, she got up and began rooting through the cupboards, muttering to herself.

"Aha, here it is."

She brought over an empty photo album, it was roughly the size of a small pocketbook, containing only one photo sleeve per page.

"I meant to fill this with photos for Sam to keep." Ida admitted as she shuffled back over to the girls. "But I don't think she'll mind donating it to a good cause."

She winked at Sam, who nodded back.

"Here," Ida pressed the little album into Kitty's hands. "Memories are a fickle thing, but photos are forever."

"I can't take these!" Kitty insisted, pushing the album back. "They're your memories too!"

"Oh my god you're both so old." Sam laughed, "Dad has a printer/scanner. I can make copies."

As Sam took the polaroids to her dad's office, Ida and Kitty pored over the rest of the album, Kitty picking out more photos to copy. She chose a few of Ida and Sam, and even one of Carrie.

"She was a total loser and I hated her but I don't hate remembering her, you know? I want to remember everything, even the bad stuff."

She took a photo of her parents, just one.

When Sam came back with the last batch of photos, Ida finished slipping them into the little album.

"There's still a few sleeves left." Sam pointed out, holding up her phone with a smile. "We've got room for a couple of family reunion pics."

The two girls squished up against Ida as Sam snapped as many shots as she could. Ones where they smiled, ones where they laughed, ones where they laid haphazardly across the lounge together.

Then Sam took a few candids of just Kitty and Ida, as they looked through the new album they'd just made together. Capturing Kitty laughing at something as Ida looked at her with a soft, loving smile.

Kitty clutched the album to her chest as she gave Ida a long, drawn out hug.

"Thank you so much." she said, her voice thick with gratitude. "It's like I can see my life in colour again."

She left the house with the assurance that she would always be welcome back, at any time, and a promise that she would always be looking out for her 'new favourite cousin'.

Sam flicked through the photos she took on her phone, she would have to make sure to have copies printed by the time Kitty returned to visit.

She knew Kitty coming over regularly was going to make things complicated, her apparent newfound protectiveness over Sam could potentially backfire in many spectacular ways, she was petty and troublesome when in the right mood.

But then again, so was Ida, and so was Sam.

At least she had better things to do now than beat up strangers' mail boxes, Danny was certainly going to be glad to hear that.

[five-rivers]

Jack-o-Lantern

Exhumed was the second winner of my poll, so here's a fairly short, fluffy piece for it!

Warning: mentions of dead bodies and past violence, none actually shown 'on screen.'

.

“Detective Patterson,” said Danny, “why did you leave five messages on my phone on a school day?” After the whole ‘I’ve been sort of dead for a couple years and also I get into massive amounts of trouble all the time through no fault of my own’ revelation, his parents had gotten the whole family cell phones.

Danny still generally preferred talking to people face to face, but he was definitely developing a slight addiction to cell phone charms.

“You didn’t listen to any of them?”

“Why would I do that when I can just call you?”

He heard a loud groan from the other side of the line.

“Oh, is Detective Collins there, too?”

“You heard that?” asked Patterson. “That’s- Okay, Collins. I’m getting there. I know we’re in a hurry. Look, how fast can you get here, Fenton?”

“That depends entirely on where you are and which one of me you want. Also, can Sam and Tucker come? We were going to hang out.”

There was a sort of staticky blaat from the other side, and the skritch skritch cha of a phone being moved, accompanied by unintelligible arguing. “Did you really just ask if you can bring your friends to what might be a crime scene?”

“Is it a crime scene?” asked Danny.

“Not yet,” said Collins.

“So?” prompted Danny. “Can I bring them?”

“You don’t respect us at all anymore, do you?”

“I respect you plenty,” said Danny, “but I like hanging out with my friends, I’m doing this for free, and there aren’t any explosions where you are.”

“You tell him, Danny,” said Sam, giving him a little fist bump, even though she was mostly watching Tucker play bootleg Tetris on his PDA.

“Just because there aren’t explosions doesn’t mean there isn’t anything dangerous,” argued Collins.

“Sure,” said Danny. “But it isn’t like they aren’t in danger all the time anyway. Ghosts attack the school, like, daily.”

“That is a terrible argument.”

“But true,” countered Danny.

“Fine, they can come. Just get here quickly.”

“I would, but you know, you still haven’t told me where you are.”

.

Danny, when touching down in a nearby alleyway, didn’t see anything particularly out of the usual. For Amity Park, that was. Except that no one was out on the streets, and there were several police cars. Still, that could be for anything. Normal things, even.

Except, they had called him.

“You don’t think it’s a dead body, do you?” he asked. “I mean, I don’t really want to see a dead body…”

“If there’s a dead body, I’ll be throwing up on you,” said Tucker, who had, as a matter of fact, been icy calm when faced with Danny’s body the first time around, and had only had a breakdown the next day. “Just, you know, as revenge. Between friends.”

“They did say it wasn’t a crime scene, right?” asked Sam.

“Yeah,” said Danny. He returned to human form. This way, he didn’t have to worry as much about people connecting Sam and Tucker to Phantom… although, that might be a lost cause. He had seen that ‘who is the ghost boy dating’ article a while back.

“So, there probably aren’t any bodies,” she said, reasonably.

“Right,” said Danny. “That makes sense. I think they were this way.”

The street they walked onto was heavily decorated for Halloween. There were skeletons and streamers, blow up monsters, orange and purple lights, spiderwebs, black cat statuettes, blood splatters, houses that almost looked really abandoned, except for the neat lawns… The neighborhood had really gone to town, especially given that this particular town was Amity Park.

Of course, there were also dozens upon dozens of jack-o-lanterns. They were lit, too, which was odd in the daytime, flickering with rainbow colors. Maybe someone was doing a Pride event?

His core chilled slightly, and a thin stream of mist emerged from between his lips. “Oh,” he said, delighted.

“Hi, Danny,” said Patterson, briskly walking over to him from where she and Collins had been observing the street. “We got the call a few hours ago, apparently a bunch of little ghosts have infes- Uh. Gone into all the Halloween decorations here.”

“Were you about to say ‘infested?’”

“Maybe,” said Patterson. “Sorry.”

“Apology accepted, please continue.”

“Anyway, after the whole ghost invasion thing where we got sent to the shadow realm-”

“Nightmare Realm,” corrected Tucker. “The Shadow Realm is completely different.”

“I was making a Yu Gi Oh reference,” said Patterson. “But people are sensitive to this kind of thing.”

“Have they done anything yet?” asked Danny.

“No, but we’ve issued an advisory,” said Collins, finally joining them. “Do you know why they’re here? Or how to get rid of them?”

“There’s not really any reason to get rid of them,” said Danny. “Wisps are mostly harmless. Here, I’ll show you.” He jogged over to the nearest jack-o-lantern and waved the others over.

“Hey, is this the best idea?” asked Tucker. “Aren’t these the guys who accidentally drugged you?”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” said Danny. “We’ve moved past that.” He knocked on the top of the pumpkin, and several wisps flew out, happily whirling around Danny. “See? They’re just little guys.”

“Great,” said Collins, “why are they here?”

“Uh, because they were invited, basically?” said Danny. “They’re will-o-the-wisps. And these are jack-o-lanterns. They’re, uh, originally, both of those were names for the same thing, and jack-o-lanterns are supposed to ward off evil spirits and represent good spirits, or house good spirits, and stuff, so…” Danny gestured vaguely.

“This is going to be a city wide thing, isn’t it?” asked Collins.

“Probably,” said Danny. “I mean, wisps are basically all over the place. They’re good little guys.”

Collins placed his hands in front of his face like he was praying. “And if the GIW come after them?”

That would be bad. Danny felt himself bristling.

“The GIW are dumb enough that we could convince them they’re just candles, as long as no one told them otherwise,” said Sam.

“Maybe sow the idea a little bit beforehand,” said Tucker. “Put an ad out for rainbow tealights, maybe?”

Collins looked at them, unamused. “And we’re going to be the ones doing most of that ‘convincing,’ aren’t we?”

“You are the adults,” said Sam, shrugging.

Danny felt himself tearing up. “You guys are the best friends,” he said.

“Oh no,” said Tucker, eyes wide. “It’s happening again.”

“What, what’s happening?” asked Patterson.

Sam pulled Danny away from the wisps. “Wisps are great,” she said, “but they can overcharge other ghosts.”

“In other words, they make Danny high,” explained Tucker.

“I’m not high this time,” protested Danny. “I can’t be grateful for good friends?”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” said Danny.

“Right,” said Collins. “Well, we’re going to give you a ride home. Patterson, you get to explain to the Fentons what happened.”

“What, why do I have to tell them that ghost drugs are a thing?”

“Because I had to tell them about the time his arm came off.”

“I still don’t get why you’re so upset about that,” said Danny, “I put it back on, like, a minute later.”

“That is, in fact, part of why we’re upset.”

“I don’t get you guys.”

[q-gorgeous]

To Kill a Phantom

Prompt: “How many times are you going to bleed for them? Aren’t you tired yet? Haven’t you had enough?” (PR313) @kiinotasha

Content warning: character death

Word Count: 1224

ao3

ffn

if anyone notices the reference in this the voice that says that line is how i imagine the voice in this fic sounds like

“Danny!” 

Sam and Tuckers voices echoed as they faded away from him. He had just been struck by a new weapon the GIW created. He’d never seen it before. They had pulled it out and shot him too fast for him to even think about moving. His parents weren’t far behind them.

As he blacked out, he could feel his ectoplasm spilling. At this rate, it would be soon before he transformed back and his warm blood replaced the cold ectoplasm. 

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, everything was black. 

He stood up and it felt like his whole body was made of air. Like it wasn’t even there. Considering what just happened, it probably wasn’t. 

“Hello?” He called. “Is anyone there?” This didn’t look like the ghost zone. And it wasn’t what he’d expect heaven or hell to look like. Maybe it was purgatory? God, he hoped it wouldn’t be purgatory. It was even worse than Sidney’s. 

Nothing called back to him so he started walking. It didn’t feel like he was going anywhere though. The blackness around him never changed. His feet didn’t even echo. Where was he?

“How many times are you going to bleed for them?”

Danny spun around, startled by the sudden voice that almost boomed throughout the space. 

“Who are you? What are you talking about?”

“Aren’t you tired yet? Haven’t you had enough?”

“What-” Then it finally hit Danny.

The late nights, the ghosts constantly attacking the city, fighting for people who could hardly care for him. Either half of him. Nobody really liked Danny. They like him for the stuff he can do and what he is. No one really likes the real him. They just-

Danny's thoughts suddenly stop. That wasn’t true. Sam and Tucker loved him for who he was. So did Jazz. They liked him before he became Phantom. Phantom wasn’t the only reason they liked him. 

“But isn’t it?” The voice called out, startling Danny once again. “Sam seemed awfully upset that you were an average, not special everyday human in a different timeline. It wouldn’t be too far of a stretch for that to be the case in this one as well. That she only likes you for your powers.”

Danny spun around again, trying to find where the voice was coming from. “That doesn’t sound like Sam. She would never do that.”

“You may not have seen it, but I have. I’ve seen it all. Tucker making a wish to be just like you, to have powers. Sam almost giving up on your friendship after you gave up your own powers.”

Danny stared at the ground. Almost every single thing they did together now was because of ghosts. They hung out on patrols to hunt for ghosts, they mapped out the ghost zone, all the movies they watched were about monsters and ghosts. Everything was about ghosts. Not about space or slam poetry or tech like it was before. 

That’s because they were busy. They didn’t have time for all of their old stuff like they used to. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to, they just didn’t have time. 

They could make time. Instead of mapping out the ghost zone they could have gone to the planetarium. Instead of watching ghost movies they could go to the Skulk n’ Lurk or that new store Tucker’s been wanting to check out for forever. 

They weren’t supporting him, they were getting a thrill out of ghost hunting. Even Jazz. Not that long ago Jazz was babying him and almost insulting him, then she found out and her whole tone changed. It wasn’t because of him. It was because of Phantom.

Danny fell to his knees, clutching his head, struggling to push the intrusive thoughts out of his head. 

“How many times are you going to bleed for them?” The voice repeated.

He remembered all the times he’s blocked them from an attack. All the times he’s put himself in danger because they were reckless, knowing he’d protect them. That he’d take the hit for them. Not to mention his parents. Getting hit by their weapons again and again and then going home, pretending like everything was fine. That he wasn’t being hunted by his own parents. 

His breathing was getting faster, his forehead touching the ground, hands in his hair. His eyes were squeezed shut as he tried and tried to ignore these thoughts. 

“Aren’t you tired yet?”

He was so tired. It’s been a year since the ghosts first came out of the portal. Since he’s had to fight enemies from another world almost every single day. He never got enough sleep, he never got enough to eat, he never had enough time to get his homework done. He was tired of everyone treating him like a failure, a screw up, a grade A idiot. Like a loser or a freak. 

“Haven’t you had enough?”

A small voice tried speaking up through the onslaught of terrible thoughts.

He wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet. Not like this. Him and Tucker didn’t get to try that new game yet. He’s never even gotten to give Sam a real kiss yet. He was looking forward to going to prom someday, even after the disaster of his first dance, just to see his friends all dressed up and having fun. He still had so much to look forward to. He couldn’t leave yet. 

Whatever this thing was doing, it was too strong for him. It was like it was pulling at his deepest insecurities, manipulating them. 

Is this what it felt like to die for real? To die and become a ghost? Is this where obsessions come from? This thing pulls at whatever is bothering a ghost the most at its death, and makes it its purpose for the rest of time? “Don’t you think it’s time to say goodbye to those childhood friends of yours?”

No. He didn’t. But he didn’t have the strength to resist. 

The blackness engulfed him, what little he could see of his surroundings faded away. Then he could feel a sort of ripping sensation, his ghost being pulled from his body. His eyes opened and he looked around, the area looked just the same as before.

When the memories came back, avoiding the capture of his parents and the GIW when all he had been doing was protecting the people of his town, he bared his teeth and let out a skin crawling wail, his hair springing up into flames around his head. 

“Danny?”

He looked down at where Sam and Tucker stood, the GIW and his parents standing just a few feet behind them, his mom covering her mouth with her hand, tears in her eyes. 

All his friends had wanted him to be was Phantom. Now, that was all he was. 

They wanted everything that came with that, they wanted nothing else to do with what came before. Now there was nothing left from before. 

And his parents. They wouldn’t want anything to do with him now. They wouldn’t miss him now. Not now that they knew. It would be better for everyone if he just disappeared.

With that thought, he faded from view. No longer able to be what everyone else wanted him to be. 

What a way to die.